Chart Week: August 8, 1987
Song: “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” – Whitney Houston
Chart Position: #17, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for two weeks in June and July.
I tend to shy away from songs that hit number one since they will get the Tom Breihan treatment over at Stereogum. I squeezed in “West End Girls” before he got to it, but now that he’s just about done with the ‘80s, he’s covered every song of the Casey Kasem era.
I making an exception for this track simply because of a little blurb that Casey shared on another summer of ’87 countdown.
Casey told a story from Narada Michael Walden, the mega-producer behind this and so many other monster songs of the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Walden mentioned how his success meant he was able to meet some of his musical heroes. Once of those heroes was Prince.
At some point they were in studios next to each other: Narada with Elton John and Aretha Franklin while Prince was working with Morris Day. Prince invited Narada over, they chatted for a bit, and then Prince invited Narada and Day outside to shoot some hoops.
Despite wearing “seven-inch, high heeled boots,” Prince won the game of 21 rather easily.
HOLY SHIT! Remember when folks confirmed that the legendary Chapelle Show Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories sketch on The Chapelle Show was true? And here we had evidence from way back in 1987!