Songoftheday 10/11/17 - Come inside take off your coat I'll make you feel at home, now let's pour a glass of wine cause now we're all alone...
from the albums New Jack City (Original Soundtrack) and CMB (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 16
Today's song of the day comes from the vocal group Color Me Badd, who came together as schoolmates in Oklahoma City in the middle of the 1980's, before being signed at the start of the next decade to Giant Records. Their first single was a track from the Wesley Snipes/Ice-T movie New Jack City written and produced for them by Elliot Straite, aka "Dr. Freeze". The result, "I Wanna Sex You Up", combined the harmonies of old doo-wop groups with a smooth hip-hop production that took a sample of Doug E. Fresh ("tick-tock you don't stop") and basically made it a percussion instrument. It was sweet and savvy enough to win over everyone without becoming as cheesy as it could've been, with Bryan Abrams, Mark Calderon, Mark Thornton, and Sam Watters' voices blending flawlessly...
"I Wanna Sex You Up" spent a month at the #2 spot on the American pop chart in June of 1991. The song hit #1 for two weeks on Billboard's R&B chart. Internationally, the record topped the singles chart in the UK for three weeks, and in New Zealand for two. It also reached the top ten in the Netherlands (#2), Australia (#4), Germany (#4), Belgium (#4), Sweden (#5), Norway (#5), Switzerland (#7), and Ireland (#9). Their first album C.M.B. quickly followed, with the boys grabbing two Grammy award nominations in 1992, for Best New Artist (losing to singer/songwriter Marc Cohn) and R&B Vocal Group/Duo performance (which went to the also-new Boyz II Men).
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Here's CMB performing the song live on Arsenio Hall...
...and again at the Soul Train Music Awards, where they picked up a pair of trophies for the single...
Even though the group never hit the Dance Club Play chart, the 12" vinyl/CD single topped Billboard's Dance Singles Sales list, with remixes like this "smoothed out" version...
The musical comedy show Glee covered the song in their first season in 2009...
...and finally, three of the members came on to Jimmy Kimmel to sing "I Wanna Sex You Up" with country star Brad Paisley as "Color Me Bradd"...
Up tomorrow: This unbelievable diva scores another top-10 hit.
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