Songoftheday 8/16/18 - There's a face in the mirror and you close your eyes, much easier to turn away than to take a look inside...
from the album Don't Tread (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #20 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11
Today's song of the day comes from the hard rock supergroup Damn Yankees, who had landed the most successful single of leader Ted Nugent's career with the power-ballad "High Enough", which reached the top-3 on the pop chart at the beginning of 1991. In the fall of the following year, Nugent, along with Jack Blades from Night Ranger, Tommy Shaw from Styx, and drummer Michael Cartellone released their second (and what would be final) album Don't Tread. Again produced by Ron Nevison (Heart's go-to), the album's lead single, "Don't Tread On Me", spent a week at #3 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, but didn't dent the pop Hot 100 at all. But just like with their first set, the power-ballad from Don't Tread, "Where You Goin' Now", got them back on mainstream radio. Written by Blades, Nugent, and Shaw, the single featured Blades on lead vocals...
"Where You Goin' Now?" became the Damn Yankees' second and final top-40 pop hit in December of 1992. The song climbed to #6 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart as well. Internationally, the single spent four weeks at #11 in Canada.
The third release from Don't Tread, "Mister Please", took two weeks at #3 on the Mainstream Rock radio tally, but missed the pop Hot 100 altogether. That was followed by the mid-tempo track "Silence Is Broken", which was used in the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Nowhere To Run. With much more pop radio airplay, it made it to #62 on the pop chart, and was also their final rock radio hit at #20. While Nugent left the act to go solo again and generally be a raving lunatic, Shaw and Blades continued to record under their combined surnames (although with Cartellone still there but unnamed). Their next album together, Hallucination, came out in 1995. The title track "My Hallucination" climbed to #26 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, while the ballad "I'll Always Be With You" "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100, peaking at #120. A second album of covers, Influence, arrived in 2007 to little notice. The band has periodically reunited for one-off live shows.
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Here's the band live in concert in 1992...
Up tomorrow: Soul-singing youngster heads to Beverly Hills.
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