Songoftheday 1/8/18 - It glittered and it gleamed for the arriving beauty queen, a ring and a car now you're the prettiest by far...

"Kiss Them For Me" - Siouxsie & The Banshees
from the album Superstition (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 6

Today's song of the day comes from the British experimental new wave group Siouxsie and the Banshees, who came together in the late 70s as Sex Pistols groupies Susan Ballion (Siouxsie Sue) and Steven Bailey (Steven Severin) put together a group to perform in their beloved band's manager's festival (with future Adam Ant guitarist Marco Pirroni and Sid Vicious himself). Based on the buzz from that, Siouxie and Severin arranged a proper band with guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris. After gaining a reputation as a live act, this lineup wrote and performed the Banshees' first single "Hong Kong Garden", which was a big success, climbing to #7 on the British singles chart in 1978. A second top-40 one-off single, "The Staircase (Mystery)", followed (UK #24). They released their debut album, Scream, at the end of the year. The record was a critical and commercial success, peaking at #12 on the albums chart in the UK, but the only successful single pulled from the record, "Mittageisen", stalled under the top-40 after the release of their sophomore effort Join Hands, in 1979. That record also reached the albums chart top-20, and spun off yet another top-40 hit with "Playground Twist". The Banshees were becoming one of the big bands of the post-punk era, but tensions in the group caused both Morris and McKay to quit during their tour behind the sophomore record. In their stead drummer Budgie and Cure frontman Robert Smith helped to complete the concerts, with Budgie staying on to join them properly, along with John McGeoch from the art-rock group Magazine.

Siouxsie, Severin, McGeoch, and Budgie would then put out the act's third album Kaleidoscope, which changed their sound dramatically. The first single, "Happy House", was less "angry" and more rhythmic, and climbed to #17 in 1980, while the album itself was their first top ten disc at #5. After playing some New York gigs, they landed their first success in America as one-off single "Israel" slipped onto Billboard's Dance Club Play chart at #73 in 1981. The Banshees would rack up another top ten longplayer with Juju that same year, with another U.S. dance hit with "Spellbound" (#64), which also hit #22 on the British pop chart. The record would be a further departure from their punk beginnings, with McKeogh's manic strumming dominating the tracks. Meanwhile, Siouxsie and Budgie, who paired up romantically, formed their own side-project The Creatures, and released an EP that same year, Wild Things, that climbed the UK singles chart to #24. Their drums and voice sound came across like fellow post-punkers Bow Wow Wow, and started a separate successful career for the duo. The Banshees followed with their A Kiss In The Dreamhouse record, which was marginally less successful, and while it failed to generate any top-40 hits, it was critically heralded for the evolution of their sound. However, McGeoch ended up drinking himself out of the band, and Smith ended up joining the Banshees on double duty from his own Cure as a formal member for a couple of years.

1983 saw the release of the Creatures' first full-length album, along with top-40 single "Miss The Girl" (#21). At the same time, Smith and Severin put out their own side-project as The Glove. Also, the whole foursome recorded a remake of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence", which was put out as a non-album single and became the Banshees' highest-charting single of their career at #3. Another one-off single cover from the Creatures, a take on the jazz song from the 60s "Right Now", became the duo's biggest British hit at #14. A proper Banshees album with Smith, Hyaena, finally materialized the next year, with two singles reaching the UK top-40 including "Swimming Horses" (#28). But Smith's duties with the Cure and this group were too much, and he left shortly thereafter. replaced by John Carruthers, who would last a couple of albums himself. His first full-length with them, Tinderbox, was preceded by the goth-wave masterpiece "Cities In Dust", which was their first major American club hit at #17, and my first real exposure to their music (courtesy of those Now That's What I Call Music! imports). However, after another album, the cover collection Through The Looking Glass in 1987, which sent a take on the Band's "This Wheel's On Fire" to #14 in Britain, Carruthers dropped out, and Jon Klein took over on guitars along with multi-instrumentalist Martin McCarrick. This line-up would carry through the band's biggest American successes.

Siouxsie's next album, Peepshow, would signal an even further transformation of the band's sound to a more produced and synthed-up arrangement. The aptly-titled lead single, "Peek-A-Boo", landed the band their first American pop hit, reaching #53 on Billboard's pop Hot 100, as well as going all the way to #1 on their Modern Rock radio format chart (the single also hit #16 in the UK). A follow-up single, "The Killing Jar", went to #2 for a week on the Modern Rock list as well. On the momentum of this exposure, Siouxsie and Budgie recorded another Creatures album, and from it the song "Standing There" climbed to #4 on the U.S. Modern Rock chart in 1989. Also from the record, the duo's most accessible single, "Fury Eyes", made it to #12 on that tally.

In 1991, the Banshees regrouped for the act's tenth studio album Superstition. The first release from the record would be the southern Asian tinted single "Kiss Them For Me". Written by Siouxsie, Severin, McCarrick, and Budgie, and inspired by tragic pin-up/movie star Jayne Mansfield, the song marked the pinnacle of their career in the States, and gave many American mainstream radio listeners their first taste of India's Bhangra music, which was starting to catch fire in Europe...

"Kiss Them For Me" became the Banshees' first and only top-40 pop hit in the U.S. in October of 1991. The song spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Modern Rock radio chart, while the remixes of the track helped it up to #8 on their Dance Club Play tally. Internationally, the record hit the top-40 in Ireland (#29), the UK (#32), and Australia (#40).

The group's follow-up single, "Shadowtime", climbed to #13 on the Modern Rock chart, and #57 in Britain. A third single from Superstition, "Fear (of the Unknown)", peaked there at #12, and was their biggest Dance Club Play hit at #6. They toured with the first incarnation of the monumental Lollapalooza festival, as well as recorded a song for the Batman Returns movie franchise. That track, "Face To Face", went to #21 in the UK and nabbed them their fourth top ten modern rock hit at #7 in the States.

Two years later, Siouxsie and the Banshees released what would be their final studio album The Rapture, and from it "Oh Baby" (which sounded like a 10,000 Maniacs record) was their most recent top-40 hit in the UK (#34) as well as on the US Modern Rock list (#21). After a second minor hit in Britain, "Stargazer", the band was dropped from their record company and disbanded not too long after touring. In 1994, Morrissey teamed up with Siouxsie for a one-off single, "Interlude", which peaked at #25 in the UK. Siouxsie and Budgie would resurrect the Creatures in 1998 for two more albums and had a handful of minor British hits, most recently in 2003 with "Godzilla!" (UK #53). The Banshees reunited for a tour in 2002, which resulted in a live album but no new material. Five years later, Siouxsie would release her first solo album Mantaray, which reached the albums top-40 in the UK and had a couple of charting singles, with "Into A Swan" going to #59 in her native Britain. She had divorced Budgie, and revealed her gender fluidity in the press. Her most recent music was the song "Love Crime" from the TV show Hannibal in 2015.

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Here's the "Kathak Mix" that took the track to #8 on the American dance chart...