Songoftheday 6/28/17 - As pretty as you are you know you could've been a flower, if good looks were minutes you know you could have been an hour...

"The Way You Do The Things You Do" - UB40
from the album Labour Of Love II (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's song of the day comes from the British reggae band UB40, who had an unexpected rebound hit with the re-release of their 1984 single "Red Red Wine", which ended up going to #1 in America in the fall of 1988. The song came from their first album of all remakes, Labour Of Love, which ended up reaching the top-20 on the U.S. albums chart. A year later, the group released a second covers album, Labour Of Love II, five albums of theirs after the release of the first Labour. While in Britain, the lead single would be the Chi-Lites by way of Inner Circle's "Homely Girl", which made it to #6 in the UK, Americans were treated to a remake of a Motown classic with musical royalty heritage. "The Way You Do The Things You Do" was written by Smokey Robinson and one of the members of his group the Miracles, Bobby Rogers. It was given to the then-struggling vocal group the Temptations, who ended up having their first pop hit with the song, climbing to #11 in Billboard's pop Hot 100 and reaching #1 on the Cash Box R&B chart (at that time Billboard didn't carry an R&B list)...

many other artists had since covered the classic, with a couple reaching the top-40, including Hall & Oates who joined Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin from the Tempts who got to #20 in 1985 in a medley of the song with their "My Girl". But it was UB40's breezy reggae treatment that would prove to be the highest charting version of the song to date...

UB40's take on "The Way You Do The Things You Do" became their second top ten pop hit in the U.S. in December of 1990. The song also crossed over to #21 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in France (#11), the Netherlands (#15), and Ireland (#26); in the band's homebase of the UK, as the fifth single released from the album it stopped short at #49.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


There was an alternate version of the video for the original British release...

Here's the band in concert touring behind the album...

...UB40 appeared on the Arsenio Hall show to promote the single...

Finally, a more recent live clip of the song...

Up tomorrow: A Partridge flies the coop for a comeback.