Songoftheday 7/13/19 - When you hear the scratch of the guitar scratchin', then you'll know that the rhythm carries all the action oh yeah...
from the albums Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me and The Specialist (Original Soundtrack) (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #13 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 19
Today's song of the day comes from Cuban-American pop star Gloria Estefan, whose last English-language studio album Into The Light had spun off a pair of top-40 pop hits in America with "Live For Loving You" and the #1 "Coming Out Of The Dark". After that, she released a Greatest Hits set, including four new tracks; one of them, "I See Your Smile", almost made the top-40 at #48 in the spring of 1993.
Later that same year, Gloria released two more special projects; first the Spanish-language album Mi Tierra, which contained two songs that topped the Latin Songs chart, as well as another, "Tradicion", that went to #1 on Billboard's Dance Club Play list. She also put out a holiday album, Christmas Through Your Eyes.
So by 1994, she was in need of a big pop hit in the States. And in came a cover of Vicki Sue Robinson's classic disco jam "Turn The Beat Around" that brought Gloria back to mainstream radio. The original was recorded by singer Vicki Sue Robinson, who took the song to #10 on the pop chart in 1976, and spent a month on top of Billboard's Dance Club Play list and remains one of the biggest hits of the disco era...
With already a fondness for percussion it didn't take much for Gloria to transform her version into a club anthem for a new sound. The single was used to promote the Sylvester Stallone movie The Specialist...
Gloria's version of "Turn The Beat Around" became an American pop hit for her, reaching the top 20 in November of 1994. The song also climbed to #4 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, while the remixes from the CD single helped the song spend a week at #1 on their Dance Club Play list. In fact, another cut from the Specialist soundtrack, her old band the Miami Sound Machine's version of "Jambala" , climbed to #20 on that dance chart as well. Internationally, the remake went to #8 in Australia, while it lingered in the top-40 in New Zealand (#18), the UK (#21), Belgium (#24), Canada (#26), The Netherlands (#27).
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the original version from the album - the music video was tracked with an edit of the dance remix...
And next up is the Pablo Flores dance remix that topped the dance club play chart...
...Gloria at the LifeBeat AIDS charity concert in 1994...
and on her Live By Request TV special in 1998....
Other artists have tried the song, most notably the late Laura Branigan, who included it on her self-titled album in 1990...
In 2005, Dannii Minogue went to #11 in the UK and #13 in Australia with her collaboration with dance production team Soul Seekerz on "Perfection", which interpolated the classic...
And finally, back to Gloria in 2004 with her Live and Unwrapped show doing the song justice...
I'll be on vacation for a week, so also will Song of the Day until I get back with a double-header of a female rap group keeping private.
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