Songoftheday 7/22/16 - And where do we go from here? Which is the way that's clear?

"Rock On" - Michael Damian
from the albums Where Do We Go From Here and Dream A Little Dream (Original Soundtrack) (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13

Today's song of the day comes from actor/singer Michael Damian, whose success had actually started in the latter profession, scoring a minor pop hit in 1981 with a cover of Eric Carmen's "She Did It" (#69) when he was 19 years old. Getting noticed promoting the single, he was hired to play a cabaret singer on the soap opera The Young and The Restless as Danny Romalotti. And like Rick Springfield, Jack Wagner, and Gloria Loring, Michael used his exposure to land a song on a soundtrack featuring two of the hottest teen actors of the time, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim, Dream A Little Dream. It was a cover of a song that went to the top-5 of the American pop chart back in 1974, "Rock On". The original artist, David Essex, was also an actor, and never had a top-40 pop hit in the US after this psychedelic pop nugget that he wrote...

Michael's version took out the spookiness of the Essex original to leave the stomping easy-to-follow rock anthem...

Damian's version of "Rock On" went all the way to #1 on the pop chart in the U.S. in June of 1989.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Pop/metal titans Def Leppard also covered the song for their Yeah! album in 2006, but while the album hit top-20 in America, radio ignored this pretty much...

Toni Basil also added the song to her Word Of Mouth album (which had her smash hit "Mickey"). It was a proto breakdance jam that's not as bad as you'd think...

Believe it or not, Blondie put out a version of "Rock On" in 2012 as a promo freebie...

Finally, here's Michael reprising his version in 2009...

Up tomorrow: A British synth star finds forever romance.