Songoftheday 5/7/18 - That old dog has chained you up alright, give you everything you need to live inside a twisted cage sleep beside an empty rage...

"Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" - Sophie B. Hawkins
from the album Tongues and Tails (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17

Today's song of the day comes from singer/songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins. Originally from New York, Hawkins started out as a backing musician until a percussion gig with Roxy Music leader Bryan Ferry led her to record her debut album Tongues and Tails, which came out in 1992. The first single from the record was the easy-going adult-pop with a dirty mouth, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover". Written by Sophie and produced by Rick Chertoff (who helmed the first work of Cyndi Lauper) and Ralph Schuckett, the song helped usher in the age of the female adult-pop singer...

"Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" became Hawkins' first and highest-charting hit on the American pop Hot 100 in June of 1992. The single also climbed to #39 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the record reached the top ten in Norway (#3), New Zealand (#4), Canada (#5), and Australia (#7). It also made it to the top 40 in Switzerland (#11), Sweden (#12), the UK (#14), Germany (#15), and Ireland (#17). She followed that hit with the song "California Here I Come", which missed the American chart but got to #39 in Canada and #53 in the UK. A third release from her debut, a cover of Bob Dylan's "I Want You", also stiffed in the U.S. but got to #49 in Britain. Hawkins would return three years later with another huge soft-pop hit.

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Sophie did an acoustic take for MTV UK in 1993...