Songoftheday 9/3/16 - I've been living in style unaccustomed as I am to the luxury I've been hittin' the town and it didn't hit back...

"My Brave Face" - Paul McCartney
from the album Flowers In The Dirt (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #25 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's song of the day comes from Paul McCartney, who we last saw just missing the top-20 on the American pop chart with his single "Press" in the fall of 1986. After releasing a live concert album in Russia, Paul set out to record his eighth solo studio set Flowers In The Dirt. For the first single from the project, he collaborated with post-punk icon Elvis Costello, whom McCartney co-wrote Elvis' biggest American pop hit "Veronica" with. The result, "My Brave Face", was another slice of harmony-heavy shiny Brit-pop featuring Paul's bass prominently, while the video was a comic take on Beatles' fanatics....

"My Brave Face" became Paul's most recent solo top-40 pop hit in July of 1989. The song also climbed to #4 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, while it made it to #12 on their Mainstream Rock list. Internationally, the track went to #18 in Paul's native England (and UK), top 10 in Ireland (#6), Italy (#3), and Norway (#4), #29 in Germany, #30 in Australia, and #17 in Canada.

His next single from the Flowers In The Dirt album, "This One", only slipped in at #94 on the American pop chart, but it climbed to #28 on the Adult Contemporary list. For the follow-up the A-side "Figure Of Eight" landed Paul his highest charting rock radio hit at #8, while the flip-side, "Ou Est Le Soleil?", gave him a #10 rank on Billboard's Dance Club Play list. A fourth single from the record, "Put It There", reached #32 in the UK.

In 1993, McCartney released his Off The Ground album, which had his latest Adult Contemporary top ten hit "Hope Of Deliverance" (#9). He's continued to release successful albums and singles, with his rock track "The World Tonight" going to #23 on that genre radio list in 1997, and "This Never Happened Before" making it to #27 on Adult Contemporary in 2006. A year later, his Memory Almost Full album provided his latest top-40 pop hit in the UK with "Dance Tonight" (#26). Most recently, he collaborated with Kanye West in 2014 on three huge pop singles, with "Only One" reaching #35 in America, "All Day" going to #15, and with Rihanna "Four Five Seconds" landing at #4 in the US and #3 in the UK.

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Here's Paul live in concert in 1990...

Up tomorrow: Jersey Boys want some touchy-feely.