Songoftheday 11/4/17 - I remember how the sun came shining through the trees made shadows on the road...
from the album In The Blood (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7
Today's song of the day comes from the dance-pop group Londonbeat, who landed themselves a huge international hit with "I've Been Thinking About You", which topped the American pop chart in the spring of 1991. Their follow-up was the mid-tempo pop nugget "A Better Love". Written by the band with Ian Green, the record combined the lush production of sophisti-pop with the soul vocals of R&B groups in America...
"A Better Love" became Londonbeat's second and final top-40 pop hit in the U.S. in July of 1991. The single also went to #37 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the song reached the top-40 in Ireland (#11), Switzerland (#12), Germany (#13), the Netherlands (#14), the UK (#23), Australia (#25), and New Zealand (#33). A third release from In The Blood, a Soul II Soul-ish remake of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry", made the top-40 in the Netherlands (#14) and Germany (#23) while being a minor hit in their UK base at #64. That was followed by "This Is Your Life", which hit the Dutch top-40 at #26.
In 1992, the group released their third album Harmony. While the first single, "You Bring On The Sun", reached the top-10 in Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and peaked at #32 in the UK, it made no impression at all in the States. They came back in 1995 with the song "Come Back", which went to #1 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart, #28 on the Adult Contemporary radio list, and #62 on the pop Hot 100. It was their strongest single since their breakthrough. That was followed by "Build It With Love", which spent three weeks at #2 on the Dance chart. Those two songs appeared on their self-titled album, along with "I'm Just Your Puppet On A....(String!)", which they tried to get into Eurovision with, and ended up peaking at #55 in the UK. In 2003, Londonbeat singers Jimmy Helms and Jimmy Chambers recruited two new members for a couple more albums, and had a minor German hit with "Where Are You" (#54).
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On that 2003 album Back In The Hi-Life, Helms and Chambers revisited "A Better Love", and the results are pretty respectable, and the video quite hilarious..
Up tomorrow: Soul-dance singer gives you a partial organ.
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