Songoftheday 2/8/18 - Meeting Mr. Right the man of my dreams, the one who showed me true love, or at least it seems...

"Finally" - Ce Ce Peniston
from the album Finally (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 22

Today's song of the day comes from singer Ce Ce Peniston, who got her start in the late 1980's. After being crowned "Miss Black Arizona" in 1989 and singing backup, she landed her own recording deal, recording a single she originally started writing in school. "Finally", written by CeCe with producer Felipe Delgado and Elbert Linnear, was a mid-tempo house music style jam mixed by club king David Morales into a jubillant anthem that spread a happy message through the thick swamp of big-voiced black women that were delegated to singing about men who have done them wrong. It not only conquered the dancefloor, but also found itself a huge radio hit as well...

"Finally" became CeCe's first top-40 single and sole top ten pop hit in January of 1992. The single also climbed to #26 on Billboard's R&B chart (with a different mix that feature a rap from MC Lethal), while the remixes of the song helped it spend two weeks at #1 on their Dance Club Play list. Internationally, the record reached the top ten in the UK (where it hit #2 for a week after its American success), Belgium (#3), the Netherlands (#5), Ireland (#5), Australia (#8), New Zealand (#8), and Austria (#9). It also made it to #12 in Canada and Switzerland, and #16 in Germany, and slipped into the top-40 in France at #39.

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The piano "hook" on "Finally" was actually cribbed from an underground club nugget from James Brown protege CeCe Rogers in 1987, "Someday", which was written and produced by house music legend Marshall Jefferson...

Here's the 12" "Choice Mix", which was massive in the clubs I went to back in the day and helped it usher a wave of soulful club music to the radio...

...as well as the much "deeper" David Morales "Journey Mix" that was more conducive to the more experimental clubs...

Next up is an early live performance of the song that proves without a doubt that CeCe was no studio creation...

Also, she was one of the few that refused to lip sync on Top Of The Pops, singing to track to promote the single, which ended up doing even better in Britain than the US...

Here's the single mix that included a rap from MC Lethal that reached the R&B chart...

In 1997, "Finally" was re-released with new mixes, including this one from Eric Kupper that helped it rise to #26 on the British singles chart...

Kylie Minogue used the instrumental track from "Finally" for her Showgirl tour performance of her own "Spinning Around" (and hell, any reason to include Kylie)...