Songoftheday 1/2/20 - I've seen the world been to many places, made lots of friends many different races...
from the album Design Of A Decade 1986-1996 (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (five weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 22
Well folks, I'm back from my holiday break from the blog, and thanks for being to patient. It's time to head back 25 years ago...
In the fall of 1995 Janet Jackson had come off the big success of her album janet. which spun off a whopping series of top ten hour ten top hits with "You Want This". Also, her collaboration with her brother Michael, "Scream", ended up in the top-five. Janet returned in the fall of that year with her first "greatest hits" collection, Design Of A Decade. With the singer moving over to Virgin Records, her old home A&M pushed out a set of thirteen hits from her three big albums bounded by two new recordings that would be promoted to radio as singles. The first, "Runaway" was released as a proper single in August of 1995. Written and co-produced by Janet and her Flyte Tyme collaborators Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the bubbly positive song was accompanied by an "up, up and away" theme to help gatherers decide on who would be coerced to join. Like a smoother version of "Escapade", the song had some interesting Eastern instrument choices...
"Runaway" returned Janet to the American pop top ten in October of 1996. The song also climbed to #6 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, and peaked at #7 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") list. The remixes on the CD single helped the song rise to #8 on their Dance Club Play chart as well. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Canada (#2), New Zealand (#3), the UK (#6), Australia (#8), Finland (#8), Ireland (#10), and Denmark (#10).
A second new track from the compilation, "Twenty Foreplay", wasn't released as a single in the US, but got enough airplay on urban stations to place at #32 on the R&B Airplay chart in Billboard, while being put out as a single worldwide, making the top-40 in Italy (#18), the UK (#22), Australia (#29), and Canada (#30).
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the dance remix done by Junior Vasquez that put the song into Billboard's Dance top ten...
And here's Janet performing the song live as part of a medley on her All For You tour...
Up tomorrow: Jazzy soulsters command.
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