Songoftheday 4/17/18 -I've been around for quite some time patiently waiting for you to settle down, but my patience is starting to wear very thin from stories of your women time and time again...
from the album Affairs Of The Heart (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11
Today's song of the day comes from Jody Watley, whose sophomore album Larger Than Life had scored her three big top ten pop hits with "Real Love", "Friends", and "Everything". Two years later, in 1991, Watley released her third disc, Affairs Of The Heart, that signaled a maturing of sound to be geared for listeners in or out of the dancefloor. The first single from the record, though, "I Want You", was paced like her previous midtempo dance/pop hits "Looking For A New Love" and "Real Love" and written by producer/collaborator Andre Cymone, and while it climbed to #5 on Billboard's R&B chart, and peaked at #17 on their Dance Club Play list, the track stalled down at #61 on their pop Hot 100 tally. She switched gears for the second release, with the lush house music jam of "I'm The One You Need". Produced by club legend David Morales, who wrote the song with Watley and keyboardist Alec Shantzis, the track combined witty lyrics, real-life emotion, and a groove that just couldn't quit, and it brought Watley to mainstream radio for one more big time....
"I'm The One You Need" became Jody's seventh and so far final top-40 pop hit in May of 1992. The song climbed to #23 on Billboard's R&B chart, while the house-music remixes helped it peak at #3 on their Dance Club Play tally. Internationally, the track made it to #32 in Canada, and was a minor hit in the UK (#50) and the Netherlands (#64). A third single from Affairs Of The Heart, the ballad "It All Begins With You", missed the pop chart, but did climb to #48 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, and #80 on the R&B list.
In 1994, Watley released her fourth and final album with MCA Records, Intimacy. The lead single was the new jack swing-influenced number "Your Love Keeps Working On Me", which spent two weeks on the bottom rung of Billboard's Hot 100 chart (but did take two weeks at #2 on their Dance Club Play list). That was followed by "When A Man Loves A Woman", which just missed the R&B top ten at #11, and returned her to the British top-40 at #33, helped by remixes that redid the song as a same-sex club anthem "When A Man Loves A Man".
The next year, Jody went "indie" a started her Avitone label, releasing her Affection album. The title track went to #28 on the R&B chart in America, and "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #118. In 1996, her biggest exposure came when she guested on Babyface's remake of her old group Shalamar's "This Is For The Lover In You", which brought her name back into the pop top 10 at #6 (and a week at #2 R&B). Going back to try again with a major label, Watley signed with Atlantic and released Flower in 1998. From it was her most recent charting pop single, "Off The Hook", which made it to #73 on the pop chart, #23 R&B, and was her fifth #1 Dance Club Play hit (it also got to #51 in the UK). That affair with Atlantic didn't last, and she returned to her Avitone label, releasing an experimental dance record The Saturday Night Experience, followed by The Midnight Lounge in 2001, which eventually sent "Whenever" into the dance top-20 two years later (#19). After topping the dance chart yet again with new remixes of her debut single "Looking For A New Love" in 2005, Jody re-emerged in 2006 with her underrated The Makeover album, which landed three songs in the top-5 of the dance chart, including a remake of Chic's classic disco hit "I Want Your Love" which went all the way to #1 (her seventh and last chart-topper). Her most recent success came in 2013, when the "waack" anthem "Nightlife" from the EP Paradise hit #18 on the dance chart. Jody continues to tour under a revamped version of her old band as "Shalamar Reloaded".
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's Jody appearing live on Arsenio Hall to promote the single...
And the Morales-mixes Club Version that went to #3 on the Dance chart...
Finally, Jody performing live in Philly in 2010...
Up tomorrow: Goth God is returning, fam.
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