Songoftheday 9/14/18 - Here it is, another day, so dark and gloomy my situation's real sadness goin' through me, because my love is not here for my kiss all I have is thoughts of yesterdays bliss...
from the album The Bodyguard (Original Soundtrack) (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 2
Today's song of the day comes from the same album that brought us yesterday's SOTD, the soundtrack to the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner movie The Bodyguard. Houston already had scored two big hits from the record, with the record-breaking #1 cover of "I Will Always Love You" and her cover of Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman". While the latter was climbing the charts, another song from the record was released as well, and it was yet another "cover" record. Recorded under the moniker S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. (the periods there because there already was a Soul System), it really was the studio creation of remixers and producers Rob Clivilles and David Cole, who are best known for their other act, the C + C Music Factory. Assembling a few studio singers (including Octavia, who had a minor R&B hit in the 80s with "2 the Limit" which peaked at #66 in 1986), they brought in Michelle Visage, who had been in one of the other C+C creations, Seduction, who had a #2 pop hit in the beginning of 1990 with "Two To Make It Right". Using Michelle for the newly-written rap verses, and with Octavia, Cindy Mizelle, Bobby Coleman, Gary Michael Wade, and Jamal Alicea for the bridge and chorus that changed up Bill Withers' soft-soul hit "Lovely Day" from 1978, which peaked at #30 in the U.S. The result on the album was a breezy mid-tempo lite-rap track, which was of course transformed into a club anthem later on. Since it was an "interpolation", Clivilles, Cole, and Visage got writing credit as well as original writers Withers and Skip Scarborough, ensured plenty of royalty money from the massive sales of the soundtrack...
"It's Gonna Be A Lovely Day" became the sole hit single for the act (and the third from the Bodyguard soundtrack) in January of 1993. The song also climbed to #44 on Billboard's R&B chart, while the club remixes of the song helped it top the magazine's Dance Club Play chart for three weeks. Internationally, the single did even better, reaching #12 in Ireland, #17 in the UK, and #25 in New Zealand. It was a minor hit in Canada at #71.
That single was the one and done for the S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. name; conceived as a way to promote Michelle's upcoming solo career, it somehow went nowhere with that (I really would like to know what happened there). Meanwhile, Mizelle did manage to put out music, with her single "I've Had Enough" going to #55 on the R&B chart in 1994. She went on to sing backup for Bruce Springsteen. Octavia would feature on a couple of singles for producer Jose Nunez, with "In My Life" going to #1 on the Dance Club Play chart in 1998. A year later, she sang on Pete Heller's single "Big Love", which topped the dance chart for three weeks and went to #12 in the UK. As for Visage, after stints of DJing, she landed the role she has gained the most recognition and praise for - as RuPaul's judge and right-hand woman on RuPaul's Drag Race since season two to today. Her work with the show, with the tours, and from everything that sprung from the role (the great book Diva Rules, her finalist stint on Celebrity Big Brother UK) has endeared her with the LGBT community far beyond any club hits.
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Here's the twelve-minute throwdown of the song in remixed form, with one of the two "Palladium Anthem Mixes"...
and the "Movin' The Crowd" mix, which kept the tempo of the album cut...
And here's the group singing live (!) to track on Top of the Pops to promote the single...
And finally, the original, which went to #6 for Bill Withers in 1977...
Up tomorrow: Veteran prog-rocker's whistle is blowing?
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