Songoftheday 6/5/16 - I try to discover a little something to make me sweeter, oh baby refrain from breaking my heart...

"A Little Respect" - Erasure
from the album The Innocents (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #14 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9

Today's song of the day comes from the synthpop duo Erasure, formed by keyboardist Vince Clarke after the leaving both Depeche Mode and Yaz and teaming up with singer Andy Bell in the mid-80s. With their third album, The Innocents, they finally broke through in America with the bubbly anthem "Chains Of Love". Their follow-up single, "A Little Respect", was just as addictive, and with the title holding so much charged energy in a time when LGBT rights were at such a crossroads, with the AIDS crisis effecting thousands in the community, and the battle for mere tolerance of our existence legally trumped any thoughts about marriage and bathrooms. With lyrics twisting around telling off a lover to lightly touching on religious and conservative foes, the song called a still-downtrodden but still-exuberant minority to the dancefloor, and now, to radio, who took to the song just like "Chains Of Love" did. And the power that had on a teenage kid struggling with his sexuality and what it meant, meant the world to him, without even the mention of "the word" it was so brazen in Andy's delivery that you knew who this was for...

"A Little Respect" became Erasure's second top-20 pop hit in the US in March of 1989. The single also climbed to #15 on Billboard's Modern Rock radio chart, while the 12" remixed version made it to #2 on their Dance Club Play list for a week. Internationally, the song went to #4 in their native UK, #7 in neighboring Ireland, and #34 in Germany, and just missed the top-40 in Canada at #42.

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Here's the 12" extended version that made it to the runner-up spot on the American dance chart...

...and Andy performing the song at the Prince's Trust concert...

...and again with Vince in concert...

In 1992, the ABBA-tribute band Bjorn Again did a reverse take in their cover of the duo who covered the Swedish pop titans themselves, and went to #25 on the British chart...

American alternative rockers Wheatus ("Teenage Dirtbag") also released a version of "A Little Respect" as a single in 2001, and went a notch higher on the chart (#3) than the Erasure single (and features an adorable Shawn Hatosy and the late Brittany Murphy)...