Robbed hit of the week 8/13/18 - Erasure's "Take a Chance On Me"...
from the EP ABBA-esque (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: did not chart, reached #51 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart
This week's "robbed hit" comes from the British synth-pop duo Erasure, who had made their American breakthrough in the fall of 1988, scoring a pair of top 20 pop hits with "Chains Of Love" and "A Little Respect". Later on that year, they released a four-song EP, Crackers International, which charted on the British singles chart (at the time EPs were counted as "singles") at #2, so far their highest-ranking success in their homeland. From it the song "Stop!" slipped on to the American pop chart at #97 (it also placed at #19 on Billboard's Modern Rock radio list and #4 on their Dance Club Play tally). The pair of Vince Clarke and Andy Bell returned the following year with their fourth full-length studio album Wild!. Four singles from the set reached the top-20 in the UK, but none charted on the American pop Hot 100, though lead single "Drama!" climbed to #11 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart, and the effervescent "Star" made it to #4 on their Dance Club Play list. In the UK, their song "Blue Savannah" climbed all the way to #3.
In 1991, Clarke and Bell released their first album of the 1990's, Chorus, which became their third consecutive #1 album in Britain. The title track, which peaked at #3 in the UK, scaled to #4 on the American Modern Rock radio chart (so far their highest-ranking hit), followed by "Love To Hate You", which got to #6 on that list and #4 in the UK. Another track from the set, "Breath Of Life", reached the top ten in Britain at #8, but like Wild!, American radio wasn't biting, with only "Chorus" inching up to #83.
Which led at an almost break before the inevitable greatest hits collection that would appear at the end of 1992. But before then, the duo recorded a few songs from one of their musical idols, the Swedish pop band ABBA, for what was originally conceived as an album, but emerged as the four-song EP ABBA-esque, which came out in the start of summer of 1992. In the UK, where like with Crackers International EPs were counted as singles purchases, the record became their first and only title on that chart to hit #1, spending five weeks at the summit. In America, where the EP placed down at #85 on the albums chart, no physical singles of the four songs were released, but one of them, their take on "Take A Chance On Me", became a radio hit, and if it were to have been put out, I'm positive it would've made the top-40. For the video, the pair recreate ABBA's original promo clip, and with MC Kinky, who had provided the middle "toast" on the bouncy reggae cover...
While "Take A Chance On Me" climbed to #10 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart, their version stopped right under the halfway mark on the Hot 100 Airplay chart in October of 1992. Besides the UK, the EP topped the singles charts in Ireland, Sweden, Austria, Greece, Denmark, and Finland, and reached the top ten in Germany (#2), Switzerland (#3), the Netherlands (#4), Belgium (#4), and Portugal (#8). It also got to #13 in Australia, and #38 in Canada.
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Here's the original music video from ABBA, where I had fallen in love for the first time with Benny Andersson back in 1978, when it hit #3 in America...
As I mentionned, ABBAesque was a four-song collection of ABBA hits marketed as a unit, where it topped the British singles chart. As such, there were videos for all four songs. Here's the club-ready cover of "Lay All Your Love On Me"...
And a techno-rave take on "Voulez-Vous", easily my favorite of the bunch...
And lastly, their "S.O.S.", bringing the old nugget back...
Andy and Vince performed "Take A Chance On Me" on their ghoulish appearance on Top Of The Pops...
And from their Tiny Tour in 1996...
Here's the "Take A Trance On Me Mix" that got the song into the top ten of the dance chart in America...
And as a bonus - Erasure did ABBA's "Gimme Gimme Gimme" way back in 1986 as a b-side to their early single "Oh L'amour". Here they are in concert with it in 1988...
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