Songoftheday 4/14/18 - You and me we were the pretenders we let it all slip away, in the end what you don't surrender well the world just strips away...
from the albums Human Touch and Lucky Town (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #16 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9
Today's song of the day comes from rock legend Bruce Springsteen, who we had last seen with his somber and thoughtful look on a crumbling marriage, Tunnel Of Love. That record from 1987 spun off three top-40 pop hits with "Brilliant Disguise", "Tunnel Of Love", and "One Step Up". After touring behind the record, it took a long four years before he re-emerged with new material. Possibly taking a cue from the successful separate-but-double album release of Use Your Illusion by Guns N' Roses, Springsteen put down two individual albums on the same day in March of 1992, though Bruce named them differently instead of I & II. He also used studio musicians, saving only Roy Bittan from the E Street Band. The lead single released from them would be a "double-A-Sided" single with a track from Human Touch and a track from Lucky Town. "Human Touch", the more adult-pop of the pair, was a building epic about needing connection that seems like a sequel to "Tunnel Of Love". The most prominent highlighted of the song are new girlfriend Patti Scialfa's harmony and Randy Jackson's bassline...
Meanwhile, the second track, "Better Days", was a bare-bones rock song almost like a stripped out "Glory Days"...
Since at the time Billboard was treating both songs on a single as a chart entry on the sales-included charts, his "Human Touch"/"Better Days" single became his first top-40 pop hit of the 1990s in April of 1992. On their Mainstream Rock radio chart, "Human Touch" spent three weeks at #1, while "Better Days" took a week at #2. "Human Touch" also reached #8 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio tally as well. Internationally, "Human Touch" did much better even than the States, topping the singles chart in Spain and Norway, and reaching the top ten in the Netherlands (#3), Ireland (#4), Sweden (#4), Switzerland (#4), and Finland (#4). It also made the top-20 in the UK (#11), New Zealand (#12), Germany (#15), Australia (#17), Austria (#19), and France (#20). "Better Days", meanwhile, reached the top-40 in Sweden (#23), Belgium (#28), the Netherlands (#29), the UK (#34), and Switzerland (#39). "Human Touch" would be nominated for two Grammy Awards, losing Male Solo Rock Performance to Eric Clapton's Unplugged album and Best Rock Song to Clapton again for his live version of "Layla".
The second single from the pair would be Human Touch's "57 Channels (And Nothing On)", which climbed all the way to #6 on the American Mainstream Rock chart, but stalled down at #68 on the pop Hot 100. Again, it did better overseas, reaching #9 in Norway, #32 in the UK, #32 in Sweden, and #39 in the Netherlands. The third single, "Leap Of Faith" from Lucky Town, peaked at #28 on the rock radio chart but missed the pop chart completely here in America; again it did make the top-40 in Sweden (#23) and the Netherlands (#38), and got to #46 in the UK. Two more tracks from Human Touch reached the Mainstream Rock radio list in Billboard - "Roll Of The Dice" (#6) and "All Or Nothin' At All" (#47). In 1993, a live version of "Lucky Town" from his MTV Unplugged stint went to #48 in Britain.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the Boss performing "Human Touch" live in concert in 1993...
And from that same tour with "Better Days"...
Back to "Human Touch" in 2016...
and finally, "Better Days" in Oslo in 2013...
Up tomorrow: Three women will get down on their knees.
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