Songoftheday 10/20/17 - You're the whisper of a summer breeze, you're the kiss that puts my soul at ease...
from the album Spellbound (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (five weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15
Today's song of the day comes from singer/dancer Paula Abdul, whose debut album Forever Your Girl had gifted her with five hugely successful singles with the top-3 "(It's Just) The Way That You Love Me" and four #1 pop hits in "Opposites Attract", "Cold Hearted", "Straight Up", and the title track "Forever Your Girl". However, her reputation was tainted a bit as backup singer Yvette Marine sued Abdul and her record company claiming her "guide vocals", which Abdul sung over, were amplified so much on the album that she basically sang co-lead on many of the tracks. Even though the suit was resolved in Abdul's favor, the perception of her as a manufactured commodity had legs, so she tried extra hard to overcome the stigma with her second album Spellbound. Produced by Peter Lord and Vernon Jeffrey-Smith, who were members of the alt-soul band the Family Stand, the album strayed from the strict club-oriented dance-pop fare of the late 1980's, and included help from Prince and Don Was on two of the tracks. The first single, "Rush Rush", was a lush love ballad written by Lord, and for MTV, who had help her become the star she was by airing her videos, a cinematic music video that remade parts of the James Dean film Rebel Without A Cause with Keanu Reeves as the Dean character brought Paula the biggest hit of her career...
"Rush Rush" became Paula's fifth #1 pop hit in the U.S. in June of 1991. The song also spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, and crossed over to peak at #20 on their R&B list. Internationally, the ballad claimed four weeks at the top of the Canadian singles chart, and reached the top ten in Australia (#2), the UK (#6), Sweden (#7), New Zealand (#7), the Netherlands (#9), and Norway (#9).
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Here's Paula live in concert with the song....
Up tomorrow: Ladies man rapper gets into the ring.
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