Songoftheday 1/3/18 - Call me by my name or call me by my number, you put me through it I'll still be doing it the way I do it...

"The One And Only" - Chesney Hawkes
from the album The One and Only (US) and Buddy's Song (UK) (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's song of the day comes from British pop singer Chesney Hawkes, whose father Chip was a member of the 60s British Invasion-era rock group the Tremeloes. That band had three top-40 hits in America, including a cover of the Four Seasons' "Silence Is Golden" that peaked right outside the top ten at #11 in 1967. His mother, Carol, was a successful actress. So it made sense that Chesney's big break would combine talents of both of them. Chesney appeared in the British movie Buddy's Song with the Who's Roger Daltrey. He played an aspiring rock singer, and Hawkes' songs from the movie became his first album in the States, retitled for the first single, "The One And Only". The insanely catchy pop/rock number was written by Nik Kershaw, who was a big pop star in the UK but was criminally overlooked in America - his classic song "Wouldn't It Be Good" only made it to #46 on Billboard's Hot 100. Since Buddy's Song wasn't released in the U.S., it was first tied into the Michael J. Fox film Doc Hollywood. The American version of the music video put him as a Beatles-esque teen sensation (yes, that's his brother on the drums)...

"The One And Only" became Hawkes' sole hit on the American pop chart, reaching the top ten (one better than his dad) in November of 1991. The song also crossed over to Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio format chart, peaking at #46. Internationally, the single was a huge success in his English home, topping the UK chart for five weeks in March and April of that year. It also spent a week on top of the chart in Austria, and reached the top ten in Sweden (#2), Ireland (#3), Belgium (#3), Switzerland (#4), Norway (#5), Germany (#8), and the Netherlands (#9).

Despite this massive success, Hawkes wasn't able to follow up his success in America, becoming a true "one hit wonder". Overseas, though his album spun off a second hit with "I'm A Man, Not A Boy", which made the top-40 in several countries including the UK (#27). A third release from his debut album, "Secrets Of The Heart" (another Kershaw song), was a minor British hit at #57.

In 1993, Chesney released his sophomore effort, Get The Picture, though not in America. The trippy dance-pop lead single "What's Wrong With This Picture" made the top-40 in Austria (where he was #1 with "The One and Only"), but in the UK it stalled down at #63. He slipped from public view for almost a decade, re-emerging in 2002 for a single, "Stay Away Baby Jane", which slipped on to the British chart at #74. His profile rose from a series of reality-show appearances in the mid to late 2000s, including a stint on the retro comeback competition Hit Me Baby One More Time, where he made the finals. From that exposure, he put out "Another Fine Mess", which almost made the British top-40 at #48 in 2005. An album including those two songs appeared in 2008, and he's made a slew more TV appearances and a couple more albums since.

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The original version of the music video meant for British audiences of the Buddy's Song movie has clips from the film along with Roger Daltrey making his own cameo...