Robbed hit of the week 7/3/17 - Cynthia and Johnny "O"'s "Dreamboy/Dreamgirl"...
from the albums Cynthia II (1990) and Like A Stranger (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #53
This week's "robbed hit" came from two of the bigger names in the Latin freestyle dance music genre, New Yorkers Cynthia (Todino) and Johnny "O" (Ortiz), who came on to the scene in the late 1980's as the style became popular especially in the tri-state area. Cynthia scored a top-40 dance club hit in 1989 with "Change On Me" (#37), while Johnny reached #48 on the dance singles sales chart with "Fantasy Girl". She got another pair of dance sales hits from her debut album Cynthia, with "Endless Nights" getting to #28, while he went to #37 on the sales list with "Memories". But their modest chart positions belie the fact of how huge these records were in New York, with radio stations like WKTU putting them on constant play. So when each of the singers' second albums were released, their label MicMac paired them up for a duet, "Dreamboy/Dreamgirl", which ended up becoming big locally but also their collective biggest success nationwide...
While "Dreamboy/Dreamgirl" climbed to #17 on the Dance Sales chart, the singles stopped down at #53 nationally. But this was a top ten hit single in the New York area nonetheless in airplay and sales.
A second single from Cynthia II, a remake of the Stylistics' soul ballad "Break Up To Make Up", also made it to the pop chart at #70, while Johnny O waited until 1993 to return at #87 with "Runaway Love" (which was a top-ten dance singles seller). The following year, Cynthia landed her biggest club hit with "How I Love Him" (#15). That came from her Thinking About You album, which also sent "If I Had The Chance" on to the pop Hot 100 at #83. They've both been performing in freestyle revival shows ever since as stalwarts of the genre...
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And here's the pair singing at one of those revival shows...
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