Songoftheday 12/13/16 - Everybody loves to feel the beat from Malibu to 42nd Street...
from the album Groove Approved (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 4
Today's song of the day comes from British singer/keyboardist Paul Carrack, who not only was having success as a solo artist in the 80s, with his One Good Reason album spinning off a top ten pop hit with "Don't Shed A Tear" and a top-40 follow-up with the title track, but also as a member of acts like Squeeze and Mike + The Mechanics, the latter scoring a #1 pop hit with "The Living Years" in the spring of 1989. Later that year Paul released his fourth solo record Groove Approved, with the funky white-boy rock of "I Live By The Groove" as the first single. Written by Paul with Eddie Schwartz, the horn-inflected song had a big sound that blared on wintertime radios...
"I Live By The Groove" became Paul's fourth and so-far most recent top-40 pop hit in the U.S. in December of 1989. The song also climbed to #22 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the single was a minor hit in Australia (#90). Nothing else from the album hit the American charts, though the song "Dedicated" reached the top 20 in the Netherlands.
Going back to his journeyman work, Paul appeared in the concert at the Berlin Wall headlined by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, and his version of "Hey You" graced the rock radio chart at #37. Also returning to Mike + The Mechanics, Carrack appeared on the band's 1991 single "Word Of Mouth", which went to #13 on the rock chart at #78 pop, and sang lead on the follow-ups "A Time and Place" and "Everybody Gets A Second Chance", both minor British hits. The Motown feel of that latter single predicted his next solo album's sound. Blue Views, which was released in 1996, took Paul to #3 on the Adult Contemporary chart with "For Once In Our Lives" (which also made the pop airplay list at #72, but not the main chart). A second song from that album, "Eyes Of Blue", went to #24, and was his most recent American solo success. He also continued to chart songs with the Mechanics through the rest of the decade in the UK. He also landed a minor British hit in 2003 with "She Lived Down The Street", co-written with old Squeeze bandmate Chris Difford. He's released albums since but is better known for being a go-to guy for the concert circuit for veteran rockers.
Up tomorrow: The Glimmer Twins are in a fix.
Comments