Robbed hit of the week 10/22/18 - RuPaul's "Supermodel (You Better Work)"...
from the album Supermodel Of The World (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45
This week's "robbed hit" comes from an icon in the LGBT community who took the art of the drag queen into the mainstream (whether she wanted to or not), RuPaul Charles. Born in San Diego, RuPaul and her sisters moved to Atlanta with her divorced mom as a teen. There, she started the gender bending fashion through the punk movement, and starred in the cult movie Star Booty in the later 1980s. Her first taste of a national exposure came when fellow Georgians the B-52s included her in their video for their own breakthrough single "Love Shack" in 1989. But still, she worked underground in bands and appearances in Atlanta and then New York City through the beginning of the next decade.
What was crucial to RuPaul's success is the concurrent establishment of the production partnership World of Wonder, originally started by film students Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato in 1991. After trying their own hand at music, they adopted RuPaul as their flagship artist, and were executive producers of her first album Supermodel Of The World. It all started at the close of 1992 with the release of what would be the title track, "Supermodel (You Better Work)". Written by RuPaul with Larry Tee (the electro-clash pioneer from Berlin who ran the club she worked in at Atlanta) and Jimmy Harry (his first of a long pop songwriting career), the house music homage to the fashion world was quite camp, but also quite sincere, and with RuPaul's commanding voice, pulled off this hurricane of attitude without seeming even a bit corny or out of place. The music video, shot in New York, got the attention of MTV, who played it incessantly and provided the record the exposure it needed to eventually by accepted into the mainstream in a direct line from Sylvester to Boy George to now an unapologetic drag superstar of the world...
While "Supermodel" climbed all the way to #2 on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Play chart, becoming their biggest hit of the year in 1993, the song stopped just short of the pop Top-40 in April of 1993. Internationally, the single reached #39 in the UK, and also made the top-40 in Austria (#16) and the Netherlands (#38). The second single from the album, the hair salon anthem "Back To My Roots", became RuPaul's first #1 on the dance chart, while "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 in America at #106, and was her second top-40 British hit at #40 as the B-side of "House Of Love". A third release from the record, "A Shade Shady (Now Prance)", earned RuPaul her second #1 dance hit (and so far her most recent). At the end of the year, she released a special holiday single, "Little Drummer Boy", which also "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #113. Signed on to represent MAC cosmetics as a spokesmodel, RuPaul brought a legitimacy to the gay world that used make-up that was essential to securing the LGBY community to corporate America's eventual embrace of the "pink dollar". At the start of 1994, Elton John asked RuPaul to recreate his #1 hit "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" for his Duets album; the result not only put RuPaul back on the Hot 100 in America (#92), but secured another club hit at #3 and a top ten single in the UK at #7 (her biggest success in that country).
In 1996, RuPaul not released her second album Foxy Lady, but also began her own talk show on VH1, which was almost like a visual encyclopedia for young LGBT kids to learn their "herstory" from. Changing from the dance-oriented Tommy Boy Records to Rhino, best known for their reissues of previous works, it may have been not the best fit, but nonetheless she scored her third and so far last Hot 100 pop hit, "Snapshot", an attempted recreation of the "Supermodel" theme, which topped out at #95, and went to #4 on the Dance Club Play chart. Follow-up "A Little Bit Of Love" didn't do much better, "bubbling under" the pop list at #119 and only getting to #28 on the Dance tally. The following year, while RuPaul released an entire Christmas album for Rhino (contract fulfillment?), Ho Ho Ho, she recorded yet another duet remake, this time "It's Raining Men...The Sequel" with Martha Wash of the Weather Girls, which climbed to #21 on the British singles chart and #22 on the American dance list.
Although she did The RuPaul show with radio cohort and friend Michelle Visage (of the band Seduction) up to 1998, besides scattered appearances, it wouldn't be until 2004 that she would take control of her own musical career and start up RuCo, where here albums have been released ever since. While Red Hot didn't make the albums sales chart, it managed to spin off three top ten dance hits including "Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous", which climbed to #2, and a remake of Depeche Mode's "People Are People", which made it to #10 (so far her last top ten dance hit).
Which leads us to 2008, when RuPaul created what could only be called the biggest thing in the drag world, the reality competition TV series RuPaul's Drag Race. Patterned after shows like Project Runway, where she had previously appeared, the contest to find "the next drag superstar" may have started modest, but with a home on the Logo network as its flagship show, grew a fanbase that far transcended the LGBT community. Her use of her own music in the show was groundbreaking in that particular field as well, possibly earning her more coin in royalties from playing than selling. Nevertheless she still had a fanbase to buy albums, and that first year Champion was released, with single "Cover Girl" reaching the Dance Club Play list at #16 (her so-far last showing). Since then, RuPaul's prominence in the gay/lesbian field has only grown to almost Oprah-like status. Six studio albums have been released since, with songs featuring on the show. The most recent is American, which was released in 2017, way before this year's tenth season.
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Here's RuPaul going on the Arsenio Hall show to perform the single live - and man that took a lot of guts to bring your own truth to the American people live on stage...
And here's the extended original video for "Supermodel", which has a beginning to gag for, including a little "Chain Reaction"...
And what took even bigger balls for her it to perform live (to track) at MTV's Spring Break that year as well...
In 2006, 14 years after the original, RuPaul Ruleased another version of "Supermodel" for a remix album. The result went to #21 on Billboard's Dance Club Play list.
And finally, a redone from RuPaul from last year...
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