Songoftheday 2/14/20 - Go ahead and take your time boy you gotta feel secure, before I make you mine baby you have to be sure...

"Be My Lover" - La Bouche
from the album Sweet Dreams (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 26

Today's song of the day comes from the Eurodance act La Bouche, one of the many dance groups put together by German producer Frank Farian. Farian, originally behind the 70s pop-reggae group Boney M. as well as a German-language pop star in his own right, was most notorious for hiring Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan to "visually front" the group Milli Vanilli, which meant they lipsynched to the vocals of studio singers for the music videos as well as TV and concert appearances. However after the group got so (probably unexpectedly) big that they won a Grammy for Best New Artist, followed by the exposure of the charade at a concert, that Rob & Fab were basically shamed from the industry. But that shunning apparently didn't apply to the mastermind of this, as Farian continued on his production career with really not much blowback. In 1994, his MCI label signed the Groovin' Affairs, changing it to La Bouche quickly on. Singer Melanie Thornton and rapper Lane McCray released their debut single "Sweet Dreams (Ola Ola E)" at the start of 1994, which became a continental European success at first. Not long after, Farian employed Thornton to sing on a record for another act, Le Click, for another label, Logic (Ace of Base's label) with a different rapper, the more "reggae-toast" styled Robert Haynes. That latter record broke America first, first hitting Billboard magazine's Dance Club Play chart in May of 1995 and climbing to #22, then slipping on to the pop Hot 100 at #89 in the summer of that year. By that time, La Bouche had released their second single in Europe, "Be My Lover", which quickly became their biggest European success, reaching the top ten in many countries. But in America, the duo of Thornton and McCray's first exposure was with their third European single, a cover of the 70s soft-rock hit "Fallin' In Love" from Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds, which climbed to #3 on Billboard's Dance chart that summer (it will be a future SOTD). That fall, "Be My Lover" followed in the clubs, and quickly made pop radio notice, and soon La Bouche became the "Real McCoy" of the year, dominating dance-oriented radio...

"Be My Lover" became La Bouche's first, biggest, and only top ten hit on the American pop chart in February of 1996. The song also crossed over to Billboard magazine's Adult Top-40 radio format chart, peaking at #38. The club mixes that broke them in the clubs first topped the Dance Club Play list for two weeks. Internationally, where the act originally hit, the single topped the German charts for four weeks in 1995, as well as for one week in Sweden. It also reached the top ten in Australia (#2), Norway (#2), the Netherlands (#3), Austria (#3), Switzerland (#5), Belgium (#6F/#10W), France (#7), Ireland (#8), and Denmark (#9). In the UK, the song went to #27 in 1995, then returned to the top-40 at #25 the following year, while in Canada it peaked at #18. As for Le Click, Farian hired a different singer to continue with Haynes with that moniker, and also eventually ended with a future SOTD. But to make it more confusing at the time, Le Click's "Tonight Is The Night" ended up being included in the La Bouche album in America.

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Here's the original European release video, which had more leather and bondage than the U.S. clip...