Songoftheday 5/22/21 - Poor old granddad I laughed at all his words, I thought he was a bitter man...

 

 

"Ooh La La" - Rod Stewart

from the album When We Were The New Boys (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #39 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 1

 

Today's song of the day comes from rock and roll veteran Rod Stewart, who had a big hit album with his MTV Unplugged live set, which spun off three big pop hits in America with "Having A Party", "Reason To Believe", and the top ten version of "Have I Told You Lately". He also appeared on the #1 hit "trio" record "All For Love" with Bryan Adams and Sting at the beginning of 1994.  The album went to #2 on the Billboard 200 sales chart in the U.S. and sold over three million copies. Despite that big success, his next studio effort, Spanner In The Works, received a more muted response, stopping at #35 on the sales chart in 1995. While the set scored a pair of top-20 hits in his native Britain in "You're The Star" (#19) and "Purple Heather" with the Scottish football team (#16), here in the States the Tom Petty-written "Leave Virginia Alone" stalled down at #52 on the chart, though getting to #10 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary radio list. Instead, his contribution to the Carole King tribute record Tapestry Revisited, a cover of her classic "So Far Away", spent a week at #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart. That set would be followed by a hits collection If We Fall In Love Tonight, which centered on the new title track. While the record would sell over a million copies and get to #19 on the Billboard 200, "If We Fall In Love Tonight" again stopped under the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 at #54 (getting to #4 on the Adult Contempoary list). Rod was finding himself like many of the adult-pop male singers of the late 80s/early 90s like Michael Bolton, Adams, and Sting, being phased out by mainstream pop (and rock) radio. He did have a left-field success in the UK with the dance act N-Trance reworking his "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" with his vocals and hitting #7 on the chart in 1997.

In 1998, Stewart returned trying to recapture the younger market with the more rock-inflected set When We Were The New Boys. With remakes of songs from the likes of Oasis and Primal Scream as well as reinvented older nuggets, the record was led off by a redo of a song from Rod's old band The Faces. "Ooh La La", written by Faces bandmates Ronnie Wood and Ronnie Lane, was the title track from their 1973 album, which topped the British albums chart. It was sung by Wood, who later would join the Rolling Stones...

Lane passed away in 1997, and Stewart honored him by covering "Ooh La La". His version, which he produced with Kevin Savigar, doesn't stray from the original more than bringing the pipes and fiddle to the forefront, but the "I wish that I knew what I knew now when I was younger" definitely feels more right to be sung by the 53 year old (!) Stewart and his more weathered voice, and he doesn't seem like he's phoning it in for once...

Stewart's version of "Ooh La La" became his 34th and so far most recent top-40 pop hit in America in August of 1998. The song again was a big hit on "easy listening" radio, spending five weeks at #3 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, and getting to #32 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in the UK (#16) at Canada (#29). The When We Were The New Boys album, released released in May of that year, rose to #44 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #2 on the British albums chart.

While two other cuts from the album made the American Mainstream Rock radio chart, with the Oasis cover "Cigarettes & Alcohol" hitting #13 and his take on Primal Scream's "Rocks" getting to #31 (and #55 in the UK), neither made any dent on pop radio or those charts, probably for actually being too hard rock for those stations that would play him. In 1999, Stewart contributed a song for the Robin Williams movie Patch Adams; the result, the Diane Warren-written ballad "Faith Of The Heart", spent a month at #3 on Billboard's Adult Contempoary radio chart, and hit #38 on the Adult Top-40 format, but only "bubbled under" their pop Hot 100 list at #117. 

Leaving Warner Brothers Records, where he'd been since 1974, Stewart released a single album on Atlantic, Human, in 2001. First single "I Can't Deny It", co-written and produced by Gregg Alexander of the New Radicals, went to #18 on the Adult Contemporary radio chart in the U.S., and reached the top-40 in the UK (#26) and New Zealand (#36). The album also made it to #50 on the Billboard 200. 

Stewart shifted again from Atlantic and signed on with record business veteran Clive Davis' start-up label J Records, which proved to give the singer the biggest boost he could ever imagine. With Davis Rod started to record a series of albums in the Greatest American Songbook series, starting in 2002 with It Had To Be You, which went to #4 on the albums chart in America and sold over three million copies. Aiming directly for the boomer market, he nevertheless churned out four volumes of that series in a row in four years, with the third, Stardust, spending a week at #1, and his duet with Dolly Parton on the holiday song "Baby It's Cold Outside" taking two weeks at #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary list. It also won him the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, which all five of the volumes (there was a fifth edition in 2011) were nominated for. He branched out to release Still The Same: Great Rock Classics Of Our Time, which also went to #1 on the Billboard 200, the R&B collection Soulbook in 2009. However, even with that success, J Records folded into mothership RCA in 2011. 

After a holiday collection Merry Christmas Baby on the Verve label, which spun off a #1 Adult Contemporary radio hit with "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow", Rod moved over to Capitol Records. His first studio set of new songs in a dozen years, Time, went to #1 on the British albums chart, while single "She Makes Me Happy" hit #12 on the American Adult Contemporary list in 2013. Two years later, a second album on the label, Another Country, sent "Love Is" into the Adult Contemporary chart at #37. His most recent studio album, Blood Red Roses on Republic Records, was released in 2018, and again went to #1 on the British Albums sales chart, and #62 on the Billboard 200 in America. Single "Didn't I" climbed to #10 on the Adult Contemporary radio chart. A year later, a collection of his older songs taking his original vocals and laying production from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on them, You're In My Heart, went to #1 in England. 

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Here's Rod with the Irish band the Corrs performing "Ooh La La" in 1998 for a TV concert....

next up on the Rosie O'Donnell Show that same year...

and lastly, Stewart and Wood reunited at a show in 2015...

Up tomorrow: Former punkers score with flowers.