Songoftheday 5/21/17 - All my friends call me a fool, they say "let the woman take care of you"...
from the album Other Voices (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #8 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11
Today's song of the day comes from British pop/soul singer Paul Young, who had made it big time in America in the summer of 1985 with his cover of Daryl Hall & John Oates' "Everytime You Go Away" that went to #1 on the pop chart, along with a respectably successful follow-up in the cover of Ann Peebles' "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down". The following year, Young released Between Two Fires, a criminally underrated album that featured more of his own original work, and while it was modestly successful in his native UK, scoring a top-40 hit with "Wonderland" (#24), in the States the song "Some People" stalled way down at #65. So in 1990, for his next record Other Voices, only three of the songs were written by Young, and the first two singles were covers. "Softly Whispering I Love You", originally a top ten hit in 1971 for the Congregation, climbed to #21 in the UK. But it was a version of a soul classic that brought Paul back to American pop radio. "Oh Girl", written and performed by the lead singer of the Chi-Lites, Eugene Record, was a huge success, reaching #1 on both the pop and R&B charts in the U.S. in 1972...
Paul kept it pretty faithful to the original, including the harmonica intro...
Paul's cover of "Oh Girl" became his second and so far last top ten pop hit in the U.S. in October of 1990. Along with MC Hammer's "Have You Seen Her", it was the second Chi-Lites cover to reach the top ten in America that fall. The single also spent three weeks at #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in Ireland (#20) and the UK (#25). Two more singles were released from the Other Voices album and were minor British hits: "Heaven Can Wait" (#71), and another cover, this time of "Calling You" from the film Baghdad Cafe' (one of my personal favorites) (#57), but neither touched the American charts. But in a few years, Paul would return to American radio and the top-40 courtesy of another movie.
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Here's Paul appearing on the Tonight Show to promote the CD in 1990...
...and lastly, in concert...
Up tomorrow: Big-voiced dance diva has some rocky organs.
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