Songoftheday 8/6/16 - Who's that gigolo on the street with his hands in his pockets and his crocodile feet...

"Buffalo Stance" - Neneh Cherry
from the album Raw Like Sushi (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's song of the day comes from singer/rapper Neneh Cherry, who was born to a Swedish mother and Sierra Leonean father in Sweden, before adopting her stepfather's surname; Don Cherry was a famous jazz-pop trumpeter who had a top-5 pop hit in America in 1956 with "Band Of Gold". She had flitted around with a myriad of post-punk acts in England in the 80s, before her break as a solo artist. And that actually came as sort of a fluke - what is "Buffalo Stance" started out as a "B-side" remix of a single for fluffy synthpop duo Morgan-McVey, who had released the Stock-Aitken-Waterman song "Looking Good Diving" in 1986. Here's the original, with Neneh cameo-ing as a guitar player in the back (along with pre-fame Naomi Campbell)...

Now the flip-side remix of the track, redone by Tim Simenon (aka Bomb The Bass), will sound much more familiar....

The "Looking Good Diving" single completely flopped, and that was the last of Morgan-McVey. But McVey, who would go on to produce the seminal Blue Lines album from Massive Attack, and would eventually be Neneh's husband, would end up producing a rework of that B-side to be it's own single, "Buffalo Stance". With re-recorded (and stronger) vocals from Neneh, the single finally got the exposure it deserved, and remains one of the "coolest" pop singles of the decade...

Those two girls in the back, tho.

"Buffalo Stance" became Neneh's breakthrough hit, reaching the top-3 on the American pop chart in June of 1989. The song also crossed over to Billboard's R&B chart at #30, while the remix 12" single spent a week at #1 on their Dance Club Play list. Internationally, the song went to #1 in the Netherlands and her native Sweden, #2 in Germany and Switzerland, #3 in Canada, Norway, and the UK, and #7 in Ireland and Austria. She would be nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, criminally losing to Milli Vanilli (who would later have it revoked).

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Here's the Arthur Baker "1/2 way 2 House" remix, which helped the song top the dance chart...