Songoftheday 10/10/16 - I said oh sweet baby lips are for kissing, I'm going crazy thinking what I'm missing...

"Put Your Mouth On Me" - Eddie Murphy
from the album So Happy (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 4

Today's song of the day comes from the comedian and actor Eddie Murphy, who used his cinematic success to embark on a music career, and with the help of Rick James, scored a massive left-field pop hit in the winter of 1985 with "Party All The Time". Also the title track from his How Could It Be album was a minor R&B hit at #63. Four years later, Eddie mustered up the time and money to record another musical set, So Happy. Instead of Rick James, who possibly wasn't happy that Eddie outsold anything he had done, he gathered A-listers like Nile Rodgers, Narada Michael Walden, Larry Blackmon of Cameo, and soft-pop guru Walter Afanasieff to produce the record. It was Walden who helmed the first single, "Put Your Mouth On Me". Writing the song with Eddie and Jeffrey Cohen, how the consistent hitmaker came up with the most cringeworthy title in pop music is beyond me...

"Put Your Mouth On Me" became Eddie's second and so-far last pop top-40 hit in September of 1989. Amazingly, the song was huge on R&B radio, which sent the single farther than "Party..." did, reaching #2 for two weeks. A second single from the record, "Til The Money's Gone", was a minor R&B hit at #75. And the album didn't do that bad, reaching the top half of the American albums chart (#70) and the top-40 of the R&B list (#22).

Four years later, like clockwork, another Eddie Murphy musical album arrived, Love's Alright. The first single, "I Was A King" with reggae star Shabba Ranks, made the American R&B (#61) and British pop (#64) charts. But the second, a collaboration with the one and only Michael Jackson in "Whatzupwitu" with a headscratchingly crazy video (coupled with the trouble Jackson was having legally at the time) caused it to just scrape the R&B chart in the U.S. at #74. Most recently, Eddie released an soul single, "Promise (You Won't Break My Heart)", which went to #28 on the Adult R&B airplay chart in 2013...

Up tomorrow: Fractured aerial band isn't satisfied.