Songoftheday 10/24/18 - You can make the sun turn purple, you can make the sea turn turtle...
from the album O3 (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song of the day comes from the British dance act Sunscreem, who came together in Essex in the early 1990s with singer Lucia Holm and synth player Paul Carnell. Their first success came in the beginning of 1992 with their single "Pressure", which was a minor hit in the UK at #60. Later that summer, the band followed it up with what would become their biggest hit, "Love U More". Written and produced by the pair, the track joined techno rhythms with joyful positive lyrics usually heard in more pop and house music songs, to create an ebullient club track that translated to radio quite well, despite a very questionable "Fathers rape their daughters" line. Eventually it made it overseas, reaching mainstream radio in America the following spring...
"Love U More" became Sunscreem's sole single to reach Billboard's pop Hot 100 chart, hitting the top-40 in April of 1993. The song spent a week at #3 on their Modern Rock radio format chart, while the remixes of the song helped it take two weeks at #1 on the Dance Club Play list. Internationally, the single went to #23 in the UK, #30 in Australia, and #48 in Canada. Two more singles from the O3 album hit the British top 20 with "Perfect Motion" (#18) followed by "Broken English" (#13), but neither of them made a dent in America. However, a remixed and re-released version of their first single, retitled "Pressure US", went to top the Dance Club Play chart in the U.S. following the success of "Love U More", and got to #19 the second time around in Britain.
Sunscreem returned in 1995 with a new single, "When", which granted them a third #1 dance hit in the U.S., but it missed the top-40 pop chart in their native UK at #47. However, after their second album Change Or Die was released in the following year, three singles from the set did get to that level, with "White Skies" peaking at #25. Meanwhile, another cut from the album, "Looking At You", spent a couple weeks at #2 on the American dance chart. The band attempted to change labels, but as their first single on Puls-8, "Catch" rose to #2 for two weeks on the dance chart, the label imploded. In 2001, the single "Please Save Me" with Push, hit the British top-40 at #36 and the American dance chart at #26. The act's most recent chart appearance came a year later when a rework of "Perfect Motion" went to #71 in the UK. An original studio album, Sweet Life, came in 2015.
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Here's the group appearing on Top of the Pops to promote the single...
And the "Sunshine Valentine mix", one of the versions that helped it top the dance chart...
In 1998, British pop group Steps covered the song for their Step One album, and even shot a video..
and lastly, the group live in 2016...
Up tomorrow: The Shorts of Hazzard fuel a rap smash.
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