Robbed hit of the week 5/18/20 - Cher's "One By One"...

"One By One" - Cher
from the album It's A Man's World (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #52 (one week)

This week's "robbed hit" comes from Cher, who had closed out her successful comeback period with Geffen Records in 1991 with her Love Hurts album, which spun off two top-40 pop hits in America with "Love And Understanding" and "Save Up All Your Tears". Internationally, she released a hits collection that topped the British albums chart for seven weeks and scored two British top-40 hits with covers of the Carole King/Gerry Goffin nugget "Oh No, Not By Baby" (UK #33) and Jimmy Cliff's reggae classic "Many Rivers To Cross" (UK #37). However, the icon was having real trouble with her health, being diagnosed with Epstein-Barr syndrome which kept her from taking on any film or touring work. Needing money, Cher hopped into the budding infomercial market, shilling a myriad of health and beauty products at the expense of her reputation in the music and the film world. After a couple of movie cameos, in 1995 she took part in a British charity single to benefit the yearly Comic Relief fund. It was a cover of the Judds' American country hit "Love Can Build A Bridge", which also featured Chrissie Hynde, Neneh Cherry, and Eric Clapton, and it ended up going to #1 in the UK. Because of that success, Cher was signed to Warner Brothers' International in the UK and Reprise in America. Her first album there would be It's A Man's World, which was released in Britain in 1995 as a mostly rock fourteen-track record. The lead single there would be a cover of Marc Cohn's Grammy-winning top-40 hit from 1991 "Walking In Memphis". Her take on the tune did better than the original, peaking at #11 in the UK, #13 in Sweden, #17 in Austria, and #19 in Denmark. For the second single, the track "One By One" was chosen. Written by Anthony Griffiths, the song was originally recorded by Johnny Logan, a British singer who is best known as the only person to win the internationally reknown Eurovision Song Contest twice. He included it on his album Mention My Name in 1989, but not released as a single...

Cher took the song and flipped the gender references, claiming a writing credit in the process. Her version first climbed to #7 in both the UK and Ireland. This original version seems to take a lot of cues from Logan's...

Coming off this success in the British Isles, Reprise agreed to release the album, albeit in a shorter version and with the songs remixed more in an adult R&B style than the rock-influenced original. The "One By One" turned into a party anthem...

Although "One By One" was a big hit in the "easy listening" formats, climbing into the top ten at #9 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary chart and #29 at Adult Top-40. But its most memorable impact came with the dance remixes by Junior Vasquez, which helped the single climb to #7 on the Dance Club Play chart. However all that didn't quite add up to enough to make the top-40, stalling under the halfway mark on the official tally in July of 1996. Internationally, the single did better in Canada, peaking at #22. The It's A Man's World album, a top ten success in the UK (#10), only made it to #64 in the U.S. in the modified version.

In Britain, the record would spin off two more top-40 hits with covers of Don Henley's "Not Enough Love In The World" (#31) and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" (#26). Meanwhile in the States, due to the success of the club version of "One By One", the second single here would be the remixed form of "Paradise Is Here", originally a German top-40 hit for Tina Turner, which went to #11 on the Dance chart. But within a couple years, Cher would find herself back on top of the chart for the first time since the 1970s.

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Here's the Junior Vasquez remix of the song with became (especially for the gheys) the definitive version of the song...