Tag: AT40 (Page 8 of 13)

Chart Week: September 16, 1989
Song: “Friends” – Jody Watley with Eric B & Rakim
Chart Position: #33, 14th week on the chart. Peaked at #9 the week of August 26.

For some reason I’ve struggled with this entry. I’ve been working on it for two weeks but can never seem to find the right tone. I’m setting a timer for 30 minutes and when that’s up, you get what I’ve got.

Jody Watley accomplished a lot in her career. Soul Train dancer. Member of the seminal dance-pop-soul act Shalamar. One of only two American artists who were a part of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” A stellar solo run that featured two #2 singles – including her first-ever solo song – and four other top 10 singles. She was a fashion icon and one of the most influential female Black artists of her generation.

And one of her songs featured the greatest guest rap ever.

“Friends” is a good enough song on its own. Its bouncy rhythm and bright horns disguise lyrics that cut the cold realities of the world: friends will let you down. It was also an essential part of my summer between high school and college.

But Watley made a decision to open her song to another artists. That decision is what made the song really shine.

Guest raps in pop songs were just coming into vogue in 1989. They were often brief, sometimes had almost no direct connection to the main lyrics of the song, and for years were often not included on the official single release. You might have to go buy the single to get the B-side version that featured the rapper. The popularity of Bobby Brown’s “Don’t Be Cruel” and “On Our Own,” on which he dropped rap verses, showed that you could combine the two forms and still have a pop hit.

Watley saw that and fought her record company to not just allow her to include a rapper on “Friends,” but to give him and his DJ more freedom than any had received before.

There was no better rapper in the 1980s than Rakim. Period, point blank. His lyrics and vocal style revolutionized hip hop and has had, arguably, a greater impact through to the rappers of today than any other rapper of his era. By breaking out of the standard, expected framework that most ‘80s rappers worked within, he opened the doors for dozens of different styles. That, in turn, made hip hop an even more potent force, ensuring there was variety to keep the genre from becoming stale.

According to Watley Rakim was, at first, reluctant to join her. She loved his work, though, and was persistent until he and Eric B came around to joining her. The freedom she offered the duo turned their guest spot into an unforgettable performance.

The song begins following the standard format. Watley takes the first two verses and choruses. Right where the guest rap normal falls, Rakim comes in. But instead just a few bars where he gets in-and-out, it suddenly becomes an Eric B and Rakim track. He rolls on for a full 35 seconds before turning it over to Watley for another chorus. Then Eric B gets his turn, scratching out a 30-second solo. Finally, Rakim drops the bomb, another 35-second verse.

What the hell was this? A pop singer letting a rapper and DJ dominate her song? Unprecedented, that’s what it was. Today it seems quaint, since hip hop has utterly taken over pop music and the singers now guest on the rappers’ tracks. But in 1989? Whew…it was something else!

What makes Rakim’s presence great isn’t just the amount of time he got to rap. Beyond that there was the fact he clearly took it seriously. He didn’t just collect a check and manufacture some weak rhymes he could tag onto Watley’s song, or pull something leftover from his notebooks that wasn’t good enough for his albums. Nope, he treated it like his song. The lyrics are fantastic. His delivery is locked in. As Big Daddy Kane might have said, there wasn’t any half steppin’ in Rakim’s performance.

Watley claims that “Friends” was the first track to ever feature a guest rapper to crack the Billboard top 10. I can’t confirm that – sadly all the “best guest rapper” articles I found are about rappers joining other rappers – but it seems right.

Watley would have only one more top ten hit after “Friends.” Eric B and Rakim put out two more albums, but neither matched the heights of their first two. Just before the end of the 1980s, just before they began to fade, they joined forces at the perfect moment to pave the way for what was to come.

Chart Week: August 14, 1982
Song: “Someday, Someway” – Marshall Crenshaw
Chart Position: #40, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #36 for two weeks in August/September.

Some one-hit wonders are easy to explain. There are the accidental hits, songs by unknown artists that get tied to popular movies or TV shows. There are novelty hits that piggyback on some cultural fad and ride its popularity to chart success. And there are the dozens and dozens of artists who capitalize on some musical trend – disco, new wave, etc. – to earn their brief moment of glory.

Others defy explanation, at least to me. These are the artists who make great, timeless music that should seemingly appeal across genres and audiences but can never leverage that brilliance into sustained popularity. To me, Marshall Crenshaw is the ultimate example of these artists.

Crenshaw has been making magical pop music for nearly 40 years now. The ultimate example is “Someday, Someway,” which just barely cracked the Top 40 for a few weeks in the summer of 1982. To me, this is one of the most perfect pop-rock songs ever made. It’s simple and to the point, without a wasted second, yet is also intelligent and extraordinarily well-crafted. That little hint of rockabilly harkens to rock ’n’ roll’s earliest days. It is one of those songs that when I hear it, I want to listen to it again and again.

Crenshaw released at least two more singles that, while not as perfect as “Someday, Someway,” should have still made noise on the charts. “Cynical Girl,” also off his debut, self-titled album, did not hit at all. 1983’s “Whenever You’re On My Mind,” a song so good it makes me dizzy when I listen to it, peaked at #103.

Perhaps that pop perfection is why Crenshaw was not more successful. His music had no rough edges, it wasn’t confrontational, it didn’t cause the listener any distress. It didn’t rail against injustice. It was completely unoffensive music that you can play, feel good while listening to, but can also easily slip into the background. Unless you really lock in and focus on it, you can miss the easy brilliance that filled his songs.

Marshall reminds me a little of one of my all-time favorite artists, Neil Finn. Both were/are absolute geniuses at crafting pop songs that had a touch of rock and a touch of college/indie/alternative to balance their mainstream base.

A lot of folks have no idea who Neil Finn is, but if you mention Crowded House, they will nod their heads. Mention Marshall Crenshaw to most people my age and you’ll get blank stares. The difference is that Crowded House had one massive, unforgettable song that was followed by several minor hits. Crenshaw never had that one big hit, and unless you’ve dug into his albums, you likely have never heard anything beyond “Someday, Someway.”

I would say it is a travesty that Crenshaw didn’t have more pop chart success. Truth is, though, he’s had a pretty good career. He got his start playing John Lennon’s role in Beatlemania.[1] He’s been in movies, including playing his hero Buddy Holly in La Bamba. He’s written music for films, hosted a radio show, has been a guest vocalist for the Smithereens since Pat DiNizio’s death, and still puts out the occasional album and performs a few dozen concerts every year. Not a bad career, to be sure. But it feels like he could have been bigger had the listening public been more open to the music he released in the early ‘80s

Chart Week: August 2, 1986
Song: “Your Wildest Dreams” – The Moody Blues
Chart Position: #20, 16th week on the chart. Peaked at #9 for two weeks in July.

Having a teenage crush on a teacher is kind of a rite of passage, the stuff dozens – perhaps hundreds – of trashy novels and movies have been based on over the years.

However, I don’t recall every being infatuated with one of my teachers.[1] I think that’s because while I had plenty of nice looking teachers, there weren’t any that were so good looking that they made me feel all queasy inside.

During my year in California there was one teacher who may have filled that role had I lived out there longer. She had kind of a Plain Jane look about her. She wore her hair straight and long and didn’t put much makeup on. Plus, she was generally a joyless, strict, by-the-book teacher. But she also had a subtle, natural beauty that you appreciated the more you were around her.

One day, however, she let her guard down a little. She told us a story about when she was in high school. It had something to do with a guy she thought was cute finally asking her out and them going hiking and a teacher from their school who was also hiking discovering the six pack they had stashed and not only taking it but leaving a note that they shouldn’t be drinking. Wow!

She was an English/writing teacher and I think some of her point was about how to tell a story, how to build drama, how to bring your story to a satisfying conclusion.[2] But in telling the story she also opened herself up to us. As she laughed and smiled while she told her story, you could feel the class growing warmer toward her. I remember gasps and laughter when she came to the kicker at the end of the tale.

This was not too long before we moved back to Kansas City. I wonder if I would have learned to appreciate her teaching skills more had we remained in California. And maybe even developed a little bit of a crush on her along the way.

What does that have to do with this song? Not a whole hell of a lot, to be honest. Except that once she told us that she liked the Moody Blues. In 1987 this was the only Moody Blues song I knew of. I think that is still the case. So when I heard it a week ago, it made me think of her and that moment when she reached out and made a connection with her students.

Chart Week: July 3, 1982
Song: “Hurts So Good” – John Cougar
Chart Position: #5, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for four weeks in August.

This entry is about how the biological information Casey Kasem shared on American Top 40 was not always accurate. John Cougar (Mellencamp) is the perfect artist to demonstrate this point, as he charted under three different versions of his last name. For simplicity, I will refer to him by the name this song charted under.

During this week’s countdown, when “Hurts So Good” was beginning a two-month stretch where it held either the #3 or #2 position, Casey told a story about John’s family life.

Mr. Cougar is famously from Seymour, Indiana, a small town not too far from Bloomington. His primary residence remains between the two cities, he holds very good season tickets for IU basketball, and has donated millions to the university, notably for the indoor sports practice facility.

As Casey told his audience, when Cougar was just out of high school, he went to a party in Seymour with some friends. They had a few beers and started “acting like jerks,” in John’s words. John saw a pretty woman and attempted to talk to her. She rebuffed his approach, though, saying he was obnoxious and she wanted nothing to do with him.

John kept seeing this lady around town, kept working her a little, but she was never interested.

Eventually, however, he proved to her that his behavior at that party wasn’t his true personality and she agreed to go out on a date. John and Priscilla Esterline were married and, according to Casey, had by 1982 been married for 13 years.

“And that,” Casey concluded, “is the persistence you need to succeed in the music business.”

OK, nice story. Although I’m not sure how chasing a girl equates to not giving up when the music business keeps knocking you down, but whatever, Casey had time to fill and he probably got this blurb from Cougar’s agent or someone else close to him.

One problem: Cougar and Esterline were divorced in 1981. In fact, if Wikipedia can be trusted, Cougar was already married to his second wife before “Hurts So Good” hit the charts.

Over the years Cougar has been married three times, engaged at least two other times, and had numerous other public relationships with women.

As with all people in the public eye, there may be better tools to demonstrate his dedication, commitment, and work ethic than by using the length of his romantic relationships.

By the way, “Hurts So Good” landed at #8 on the year-end Hot 100 for 1982, the highest position for a song that did not reach #1 over the course of the year. That was one spot higher than one of the three songs that kept “Hurt So Good” out of the #1 spot, the Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra.” Cougar’s other massive ’82 hit, the far superior “Jack and Diane,” was one spot ahead at #7.

Chart Week: June 23, 1984
Song: “Obscene Phone Caller” – Rockwell
Chart Position: #39, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #35 the week of June 30.

I have always prided myself for knowing minor hits by artists who have been labeled as One Hit Wonders by the general public. Others find this trait annoying, but it’s kind of too late to change now. Not that I’m in-your-face about it. But I also do not hesitate to point out how Scandal or whoever actually had X other songs that cracked the top 40 in addition to their one, big, unforgettable hit.

So it pains me to admit I have zero memory of this song, the follow-up to Rockwell’s massive debut single, the #2 hit “Somebody’s Watching Me.” I mean, this was in the peak of my top 40 radio listening. When I listened to AT40 on Sunday mornings and The Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 Countdown on Sunday evenings. When I would switch between the two top 40 stations in Kansas City on a regular basis. When I would watch every second of MTV I could when over at friends’ homes. But when I heard this song recently, nothing about it rang a bell. Not the title. Not the melody. Nothing about the music or Rockwell’s vocal performance. I am ashamed of myself.

There’s an easy explanation for the difference in chart performance between the songs, and of why Rockwell never again hit the top 40: his boyhood pal Michael Jackson sang on the chorus of “Somebody’s Watching Me.” There is little doubt that having the biggest artist in the world drop in to sing the most memorable lines made that track stand out from all the other new music in the spring of 1984.

People were freaking nuts about Michael, and with Thriller pretty much milked of every possible hit fans snatched up anything they could get to hear new Michael. “Somebody’s Watching Me” was the biggest example. At the same time that “Obscene Phone Caller” was making its brief chart run, a recycled Michael track from the early ‘70s, “Farewell My Summer Love,” hit the charts for two weeks. There was The Jackson’s Victory album, which was mostly crap but had two top 20 singles thanks to Michael’s vocals.¹ Later in 1984, big sister Rebbie had the only top 40 pop hit of her career with “Centipede,” a song that Michael wrote and produced. It’s safe to say some of Prince’s success in1984 was because of walls that Michael had battered open for him.

As Lionel Richie might have said, Michael was outrageous from late 1982 through 1984.

By the way, isn’t it a little strange that Rockwell’s two hits were titled “Somebody’s Watching Me” and “Obscene Phone Caller”? And in 1985 he had a single titled “Peeping Tom”? I’m sensing a trend, and it’s a little disturbing.

It’s also pretty fresh that Rockwell and his management began the video for “Obscene Phone Caller” with a few seconds of “Somebody’s Watching Me.” Just a little reminder of why you loved him a few weeks earlier. And always a sign that the next song isn’t going to be nearly as good.

1. Mick Jagger on “State of Shock” didn’t hurt, either.

Chart Week: May 10, 1986
Song: “Be Good To Yourself” – Journey
Chart Positions: #20, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #9 the week of May 31.

Remember when it used to be a surprise when new music arrived? At least for kids. Before the internet, before I had cable TV, and before I could read music magazines regularly, new albums by my favorite artists often appeared seemingly out of the blue. I might get a hint when the first single hit the radio, but it was still often a mystery when I would be able to go buy the album that the single came from.

Beginning my junior year of high school, I would flip through Rolling Stone in the library, note the dates of upcoming albums I was looking forward to, and then jot them on my wall calendar at home. These days I have a running text file where I list new releases that are on my radar. There are still surprises, but I generally know when something I like is about to be released.

But back in 1986 I was thrilled that Journey, my favorite group at the time, had a new single climbing the charts in advance of their new album, Raised on Radio. A week or so after the album’s release I took ten of my hard-earned allowance dollars to Musicland, slapped them down on the counter, and took home my own cassette copy.

I had been teased by new Journey music a couple times in the years between Frontiers and Raised on Radio. “Ask the Lonely” appeared on the Two of a Kind soundtrack in late 1983 and got some decent airplay. Bigger was the 1985 single “Only the Young,” which appeared on the legendary Vision Quest soundtrack and peaked at #9.

With both of these songs, when I heard them the first time, my pulse quickened thinking a new Journey album was on the horizon. Turned out they were both leftovers from the Frontiers sessions the band farmed out to soundtracks. (More on “Only the Young” in a moment…)

Although I was still very much into my Top 40 listening ways in the spring of ’86, high school and changes in the musical landscape were beginning to adjust my listening habits. That spring I was also listening to New Edition’s All For Love album, notably “School,” their pro-education rap that was scratching an itch I didn’t really know I had. RUN-DMC and the Beastie Boys would make that itch really flare up a few months later.

I wasn’t into the college and late stage New Wave music upper classmen I knew listened to. But those sounds would influence what I would get into a few years down the road.

In the spring and summer of 1986 I was also super into Van Halen, both the new Sammy Hagar stuff and the older David Lee Roth stuff. By the end of that summer I owned every VH album and listened to their harder rock a lot more than softer bands like Journey, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, etc..

These changes were all either just happening or in the future. I know I was super-pumped to have new music from Journey for the first time in over three years during the spring of my freshman year of high school.

“Only the Young” might be my favorite Journey song, definitely one of the few I still like today. I think a lot of that is because despite being a top 10 hit, it wasn’t overplayed like so many of their songs. And it isn’t super sappy.

I had no idea until this week that Steve Perry, Neal Schon, and Jonathan Cain sold the song to the band Scandal after it was pulled from Frontiers. Scandal included their version on Warrior, the biggest album of their career. A year later when Journey went ahead and put their version on the Vision Quest soundtrack, Scandal sued them. Apparently there had been some language in their purchase of the song that prevented Journey from releasing it as a single, and Scandal won a nice little settlement.

I just listened to Scandal’s version for the first time ever. Musically, it’s pretty faithful to the Journey version. The guitar solo goes in a different direction, which makes sense. Patty Smyth does a nice job on vocals, but she’s no Steve Perry. It’s a solid 7 to Journey’s hard 9.

Chart Week: April 23, 1983
Song: “One On One” – Daryl Hall & John Oates
Chart Position: #7, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 for three weeks.

Sometimes I come across anecdotes on AT40 that make me giddy.

For example, I first heard this episode a few years back while in the car one Sunday morning. I heard the story I’m about to share and started hooting in excitement. I believe I got wherever I was going – grocery store, donut shop, soccer game? – and immediately tapped out a reminder to share the story with a couple brothers in music as soon as I had the chance.

I’m glad I heard it again so that I can share it with you all.

Casey began the story by pointing out that hitting #1 was a big deal, even for established stars. Some celebrated with shopping sprees, new cars, or big parties for friends and families.

Daryl Hall and John Oates had a different experience.

In 1982 they learned their song “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” hit number one – their fourth #1 single – while on tour in Kansas City. After their show they decided to celebrate at a “very popular barbecue ribs place,” taking a limo from Kemper Arena (I presume) to the restaurant. After filling their bellies with delectable smoked meats and exiting with doggie bags of leftovers, they stood outside the restaurant and waited for their limo. And waited, and waited, and waited. It never returned. It being late night in Kansas City in 1982, there were no cabs to hail.

John Oates picks up the story:
“We’re standing there in front of this barbecue ribs place and finally decided to walk back to our hotel. And then a guy drives by in his pickup and says ‘Hey, you guys need a lift?’ There we were with a #1 record, riding back to our hotel on the flatbed of a pickup trick.”

That is an A+ fucking story, Casey! It hit a lot of spots for me and several of my brothers in music. I just wish I knew what KC barbecue place they went to. And I wonder if a place stayed open late for them, because surely as a headlining act on an arena tour, they were performing deep into the night.

It’s shit like this that I still listen to radio shows that are nearly 40 years old.

“One on One” peaked at #7 for three straight weeks. One spot below them was Journey’s “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart).” Three weeks in one spot was nothing to Steve Perry and the boys. “Separate Ways” spent six straight weeks at #8, which is kind of incredible.

Bonus: Might as well share the song the story was about, too.

Chart Week: April 10, 1982
Song: “Genius of Love” – Tom Tom Club
Chart Position: #37, 12th week on the chart. Peaked at #31 for two weeks.

(Administrative note: this is the second RFTS entry from this chart week. The first is here.)

This entry is both about the song and about the radio station on which I heard it the most as a kid.

Tom Tom Club was a side project of married couple Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, members of Talking Heads. In Tom Tom Club, they branched out from Talking Heads more avant-garde sound into dance-oriented music. Which made sense as they served as Talking Heads rhythm section, Frantz on drums and Weymouth on bass.

“Genius of Love” was the biggest song of Tom Tom Club’s career. It topped the the Billboard Disco chart and reached #2 on the Hot Soul Singles chart. More on that in a second.

That success on the Disco and Soul charts wasn’t enough to drive strong pop chart success. “Genius of Love” slowly simmered on the pop charts for three months before it finally cracked the Top 40. From its peak at #31, it dropped a massive 54 spots to #85 in early May and was gone soon after.

Yet the song made its mark. Thanks to its overall funkiness and its shoutouts to legends of the Black music world, it got serious airplay on Black radio. From that exposure, it became one of the most sampled songs of the 1980s, both in other dance and R&B songs, and in hip hop.

My early knowledge of the song came from its more obscure chart success. In the early ‘80s, my mom bounced around in her default radio stations. She would listen to pop stations, to adult contemporary stations, and to Kansas City’s only soul station, 103.3 KPRS.

KPRS was a whole new world to me when we moved to Kansas City from a small town in southeast Missouri. My parents had long listened to “Black” music, but it was to crossover artists like the Commodores, Earth Wind & Fire, Donna Summer, and so on that they heard on pop and disco stations. When we moved to Kansas City in 1980 and they began listening to KPRS, I was hearing all kinds of soul artists that I had never heard before.

More importantly, KPRS was truly a Black station. It was the first Black-owned radio station west of the Mississippi, and remains the oldest continuously Black-owned station in the country. All the DJs were Black. It featured a nightly news bulletin from the National Black Network, which certainly brought a different perspective than what the AM news-talk stations were providing. Biggest was how KPRS ran ads from Black-owned businesses you just didn’t hear on Q–104, KY–102, and ZZ–99. Harold Pener’s clothing store is the most memorable example. Listening to KPRS in the early 1980s opened my ears to a whole different world.

So how do we tie together “Genius of Love” with KPRS? Well, KPRS played very few white artists back in the day.[1] And often it was just individual songs by white artists they would play. Hall & Oates were an obvious cross-over point, but really only “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” and “One on One” got serious airplay on KPRS. Teena Marie was white, but she was basically a Black artist and KPRS played many of her songs. And then “Genius of Love,” with its totally funky sound, got airplay.

KPRS used “Genius of Love” in a weird way, though. KPRS was an automated station for a long stretch of that era. Before the NBN news bulletin at five minutes to the hour, the computer would often select “Genius of Love” to fill in the gap before the news ran. If there were six minutes until the news, “Genius” would play once, jump back to the song’s midway point, and begin again. If there were two minutes until the news, the first two minutes would play before it abruptly cut off and the news began. The nights when the computer got confused and began playing it too early, over another song, and then re-started it multiple times to attempt to get the timing synced up always made me laugh. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but looking back this low-tech, high-tech moment is pretty charming.

Thus the song was cemented into my memory.

Chart Week: March 30, 1985
Songs: “Missing You” – Diana Ross, “Nightshift” – The Commodores
Chart Positions: #15, 18th week on the chart. Peaked at #10 for two weeks in April. #10, 10th week on the chart. Peaked at #3 the week of April 20.

Music fans know where I’m going with this entry. These two songs were both tributes to one of the greatest singers in American history.

Marvin Gaye was murdered by his father on April 1, 1984 following an argument between the two men. They had a long, troubled history together. Marvin Gay Sr. (note the difference in spelling of their last names) brutally beat his son often during his childhood. Their final altercation came when Marvin Jr. intervened in a fight between his parents. Marvin Sr. grabbed a gun and shot his son to death at the age of 44.

Marvin Gaye had one of the most amazing careers in American music. He broke out as an early star of Motown, both writing for other label acts and as a singer. He began with classic, wholesome songs like “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),” and “Can I Get a Witness.” He had a long series of hits partnering with Mary Wells, Diana Ross, and most notably Tammi Terrell.

Seriously, if all he had ever released were his songs with Terrell, he still might be the greatest Motown act this side of Stevie Wonder.[1]
“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “If This World Were Mine,” “If I Could Build My World Around You,” “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” “You’re All I Need To Get By.” As I often say in these pieces, many artists would kill to have one of those songs. Marvin had all those…and many more.

In the 1970s his music become both more introspective and worldly, embracing political causes and addressing social ills. What’s Going On was his magnum opus, and of the greatest albums of its, or any, time. “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology),” “Trouble Man,” and the album’s title track changed the arc of Black music, opening doors for performers to do more than sing love songs or dance tracks. Thanks to the album’s success, both critically and commercially, Motown relaxed the control it forced upon many of its artists, notably Stevie Wonder, who was about to go on one of the greatest runs of music ever seen. Well, heard.

Marvin struggled in the late 1970s, between addiction, marital woes, tax issues, and so on. But he returned in late 1982 with the triumphant “Sexual Healing,” and seemed poised for a glorious third act to his career before his death.

A little over a year after his passing, two artists hit the top ten with songs that were tributes to him.

Diana Ross’ “Missing You” was based on conversations she had about her former collaborator with Lionel Richie, who produced the track. It’s a little over-the-top, but Diana was always a little over-the-top so it fits. It still felt honest and moving.

The Commodores’ track, which was split between honoring Gaye and Jackie Wilson, who had also died in 1984, is my favorite of the two tracks. I’ve always loved its warmth, its soul, and how it felt more open than Ross’ highly personal track. Ironically, “Nightshift” was the only Top 40 single the Commodores had after Richie’s departure. Vocals were split between Walter Orange, who handles lead vocals on “Brick House,” and Richie’s replacement, J.D. Nichols. I found it interesting that the band did not want to release the song as a single but were forced to by their record label. It only went to #3 and earned them a Grammy a year later. Sometimes the label is right.

Marvin Gaye was a musical giant. He created dozens of timeless tracks, he helped many other acts find success, and he changed the musical world for all that followed him. These two tracks were fitting tributes.