Robbed hit of the week 3/14/22 - Amber's "Sexual (Li Da Di)"...

 

 

"Sexual (Li Da Di)" - Amber

from the album Amber (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #42 (one week)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from Dutch dance-pop singer Amber (aka Marie-Claire Cremers), who had landed in the American Hot 100 top-40 in the beginning of 1997 with her debut single "This Is Your Night".  A year later, she would collaborate with Ultra Nate and Jocelyn Enriquez for a cover of the disco remake of the Gordon Lightfoot ballad "If You Could Read My Mind" as the "Stars on 54" for the movie 54 about the disco scene in the late 1970s. The song scaled to #3 on the American dance club play chart, and #52 on the pop Hot 100. It also was a top ten hit in Canada (#3), Australia (#3), New Zealand (#6), and Spain (#10), and topped out at #23 in the UK. That track would also appear on Amber's sophomore album Amber, which came out in the early fall of 1999. The next single from that record would be her own affair, "Sexual (Li Da Di)". Written by Amber and song doctors Rick Nowels and Billy Steinberg, the song featured heavy synths riding over a pulsing electrodance beat provided by producers the Berman Brothers, with Amber singing scant but enticing lyrics of attraction, perfectly suited for the club, with the parenthetical title giving the vocal hook to lodge in your brain. The music video has Amber vamping it up for an apartment building hunk, with the creepiest use of a chihuahua that I've ever seen, and I've seen Beverly Hills Chihuahua 1 & 2....

While "Sexual" scored Amber her first #1 hit on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Play chart, the song stalled just under the pop Top-40 in February of 2000. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#24), the UK (#34), and France (#40). The Amber album, released in September of 1999, missed the Billboard 200 sales chart.

The third offering from Amber would be "Above The Clouds", followed by "Love One Another", which both topped Billboard magazine's Dance Club Play chart. 

(8/10)

 

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Here's the extended club remix from the Thunderpuss team that helped it top the dance chart for a week...

 

 

Next up, Amber appearing live on the Donny & Marie talk show, where Donny only announces it as "Li Da Di"....

And again for a TV spot in Canada to a screaming throng...

and finally live in concert in 2019 opening for Bananarama...