Robbed hit of the week 10/24/16 - The Doobie Brothers' "Need A Little Taste Of Love"...

"Need A Little Taste Of Love" - The Doobie Brothers
from the album Cycles (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the southern rock band the Doobie Brothers, who made a big comeback in the summer of 1989 (albeit without Michael McDonald) with the top ten hit "The Doctor".  The second single from their Cycles album was a cover of the Isley Brothers' "Need A Little Taste Of Love", which originally appeared on their Live It Up album in 1974...

The Doobies kept the breezy tempo of the Isleys version and pumped up the rhythm guitar, making it call back to their own mid-70s work like "Listen To The Music"...

While their version of "Need a Little Taste Of Love" went all the way to #3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, the song stalled right under the top-40 at #45 in September of 1989. The song did better at "adult contemporary" radio, reaching #27. Internationally, the song was a minor hit in the Netherlands (well, natch) at #63. A third single from the album, "South Of The Border", went to #30 on the Rock radio list.

In 1991, the band released a follow-up album, Brotherhood, and neither single made the top-40 on the pop chart, though "Dangerous" climbed to #2 on the Mainstream Rock chart. A few years later, very cool remixes of past hits "Long Train Runnin'" and "Listen To The Music" made the British singles chart, with the former going as high as #7 in 1993 (much better than the original's #29 peak).

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...and here's the studio version that made the single and the album...