Songoftheday 6/17/20 -You captured my heart you're the key to my life, a vision of our love that made me survive...
from the album This Is Your Night (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #24 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 25
Today's song of the day comes from Marie-Claire Cremers, who records under the moniker Amber. Born in the Netherlands before moving to Germany, the singer released her debut single "This Is Your Night" in the spring of 1996. Written and producer by brothers Christian and Frank Berman, the song took the frantic pace of Eurodance, the thumpy bass of lite-house acts like Snap!, and Amber's chipper and uninflected vocals added up to a club hit that got picked up as the dance radio hit of the second half of the year...
"This Is Your Night" became Amber's first and only top-40 pop hit, spending a lengthy 25 weeks in the top-40 and 40 frames on Billboard's Hot 100, peaking just below the halfway mark on the list in January of 1997. The song also popped on to their Adult Top-40 radio format chart for a single week at #40. The remixes for the dancefloor helped the song go to #10 on the Dance Club Play list. Internationally, the single was a scattered success, reaching the top-40 in Australia (#11), the Netherlands (#14), and New Zealand (#40). The This Is Your Night album didn't make the Billboard 200 sales chart in America, but the record did spin off two more pop hits. Second single "Colour Of Love" (not to be confused with the Celine Dion album of the same name), another Berman Brothers production, rose to #74 on the Hot 100 pop chart, and was a top-40 hit in New Zealand at #31 and Iceland at #38, and on Billboard's Dance chart it topped out at #5. Third release "One More Night" did a little better, peaking at #58 on the American pop chart, while hitting #9 on the Dance Club Play list.
The following year, Amber joined up with club faves Ultra Nate and Jocelyn Enriquez for a post-disco remake of the Gordon Lightfoot ballad "If You Could Read My Mind" billed as the "Stars On 54" for the movie 54 about the legendary nightclub. The single got to #52 on the pop chart and #3 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart, and overseas made the top ten in Canada (#3), Australia (#3), New Zealand (#6), and Spain (#10), while landing Amber a top-40 hit in the UK at #23.
In 1999, the singer returned with her self-titled sophomore album. Lead single "Sexual (Li Da Di)" just missed becoming a second top-40 pop hit in America at #42 (although it remained on the chart for a hefty 29 weeks), but it did start a streak of five consecutive number one dance hits. It also was a top-40 hit in New Zealand (#24) and her first in the UK (#34) and France (#40). That was followed by #1 club jams "Above The Clouds" and "Love One Another", the latter which would go on to be covered by Cher and nominated for Best Dance Recording in 2004, losing to Kylie Minogue for "Come Into My World".
Amber came back in 2001 with her third disc, Naked, with another pair of #1 dance hits with "Yes!" and "The Need To Be Naked". After that, she left Tommy Boy Records to strike out on her own as an independent. In 2004, her most recent studio album My Kind Of World was released, which spun off a trio of moderately successful club hits, the biggest being "You Move Me" at #4. Her most recent club hit was in 2006 with the one-off single "Melt With The Sun" featuring dance act Sweet Rains, which got to #5 on Billboard's Dance Club Play list. She's since been performing at a lot of gay pride events, but somehow a new club hit hasn't arrived yet. She deserves better.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the extended club mix from Junior Vasquez that helped the single reach the top ten on the dance chart in Billboard...
Next up is an appearance on Canadian TV in 1996...
And lastly, live in concert in 2019 with "This Is Your Night" and "One More Night"...
Up tomorrow: Bass music spins off a track that makes a viral appearance decades later...
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