Songoftheday 11/1/16 - Ooh baby when I see your face mellow as the month of May, Oh darling I can't stand it when you look at me that way...
from the album Martika (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #25 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song of the day comes from the Cuban-American teen-pop singer Martika, who had already scored two hits from her self-titled debut album with the effervescent "More Than You Know" and the more somber "Toy Soldiers", the latter going all the way to #1 on the American pop chart in the summer of 1989. The third release from the record would be a cover of a classic soft-rock song from one of the biggest albums of all time, Carole King's Tapestry. "I Feel The Earth Move" was the first track on that album, and set the tone for the soulful yet earthy cornerstone of music history, and was a #1 hit in 1971 for five weeks as a "double-sided A-single" paired with the adult-pop song "It's Too Late"...
Martika's version took a recycled Dead Or Alive groove and substituted a little more attitude for the soul, though she has more vocal chops than most of the rest of the dance-pop crowd...
Martika's version of "I Feel The Earth Move" became her third top-40 pop hit in October of 1989, and would've probably done better if not for the unfortunate timing of the "big" Loma Prieta earthquake in California around the time of the World Series in San Francisco, with 63 people dead causing radio to shun the track. The 12" remix version climbed to #20 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart as well. Internationally, the single was much more successful, reaching the top-10 in Australia (#2), New Zealand (#3), Ireland (#7), and the UK (#7), and peaked at #20 in Germany.
A fourth single from her debut, "Water", was a minor hit in the UK (#59) and Australia (#98).
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
There was an alternate version of the video made for the club remix...
Finally, here she is live on the Arsenio Hall show...
Up tomorrow: An equine-ly good soft-rock band is naming things.
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