Songoftheday 8/31/20 - If you leave me you'll let a good thing fall apart, if you deceive me you'll leave a pain inside my heart...

 

 

"Please Don't Go" - No Mercy

from the album No Mercy (US) and My Promise (Worldwide) (1996)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #21 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 8

 

Today's song of the day comes from the Latin pop/dance band No Mercy, who were transplanted from Miami to Germany under the wing of Frank Farian (yes, the Milli Vanilli guy) and ended up with a top ten pop smash in America with their single "Where Do You Go" in the fall of 1996.  The second American release from the trio would be the track "Please Don't Go", written by Farian (under his real name Franz Reuter probably to hide), Mary Applegate, Peter Bischoff-Fallenstein, and No Mercy lead singer Marty Cintron. As for the Hernández twins backing him up, I kind of believe they were Milli Vanilli'd in by Farian. The Latin spin on Eurodance struck gold again...

"Please Don't Go" became No Mercy's second and final top-40 pop hit in the U.S. in March of 1997. Internationally, the single was a big success, reaching the top ten in the UK (#4), Spain (#5), and Austria (#5), and making the top-40 in Germany (#11), the Netherlands (#11), Belgium (#13F), Switzerland (#15), Ireland (#19), Canada (#23),  Iceland (#24), and Australia (#35).

The next single released by the group was the ballad "When I Die", which came a notch from reaching the top-40 in America at #41 in the fall of that year. It actually was a song first recorded by "The Real Milli Vanilli" studio singers after Farian's Rob & Fab debacle. Nevertheless, that single topped the Dutch and Austrian charts. The fourth offering was a Latin dance cover of American country crossover band Exile's 1978 #1 pop hit "Kiss You All Over", which was their sole entry on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Play chart, spending a week at #1, while peaking at #80 on the pop Hot 100. (It did reach #16 in the UK). 

No Mercy returned in 1998 with their second album, More, which was ignored in the States, but was a moderate success in the Germanic center of Europe, reaching the top ten and spinning off a top-40 single with "Hello How Are You" (#12 Austria, #14 Switzerland, and #24 in Germany).  A daring cover of American arena-rock staple Boston's "More Than A Feeling" blipped on to the German chart at #94. In 2002, after another cover of a rock hit, this time the Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Understood" stalled down at #65 in Germany and passed over everywhere else, their third album was shelved until 2007, with Day By Day, their most recent set, was released. Since then, Marty has pretty much toured as "No Mercy" since.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's the trio performing in concert in Chile in 1997...

And lastly, Marty doing his thing in Germany in 2014...

Up tomorrow: Soul vocal group revives a #1 soft-rock smash from 1982, and brings along its original lead singer for the ride.