Songoftheday 4/16/17 - Hard to get impossible to hold, straight and narrow like a burning fuse...
from the album Alannah Myles (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 4
Today's song of the day comes from Canadian rock singer Alannah Myles, who broke through big in the U.S. with her second single from her debut album, "Black Velvet", in the spring of 1990. Working on that success, her previous single up North, "Love Is", was re-released as a follow-up. Like "Velvet" the mid-tempo rhythmic song was written by her producers Christopher Ward and David Tyson, and it originally hit #16 in Canada the previous year...
"Love Is" became Alannah's second and last top-40 pop hit in America in June of 1990. The song did better on rock radio, climbing to #19. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in Australia (#12), Ireland (#23), the Netherlands (#25), while it was a minor hit in Germany (#45) and the UK (#61).
Despite not being able to continue the level of her success in the States, Myles' career in her home country kept going. Two more singles were released from her debut, "Still Got This Thing" and the ballad "Lover Of Mine", the latter of which did even better than "Black Velvet" there, peaking at #2. A year later, Myles released her sophomore effort, Rockinghorse, which was critically well-received and even though Americans ignored it, five singles reached the Canadian pop chart, with lead track "Song Instead Of A Kiss" becoming her sole Canadian #1, staying there for four weeks.
In 1995, A-lan-nah came out, and landed her another top ten single with "Family Secret", which returned her to her blues-rock start. A couple years later, her A Rival was released, and although the single "Bad 4 You" just missed the Canadian top-40 at #45, the album itself did. Alannah has put out a couple of indie albums since, and slipped on to the German chart in 1998 with a Rednex-style "techno-country" cover of Berlin's "Like Flames" (#98 GER). But I truly suggest listening to her entire career of work, especially Rockinghorse; it stands up with the best of mainstream rock of that time.
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Here's the original video for "Love Is" from the Canadian release in 1989...
Up tomorrow: British pair dreamily reign.
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