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Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Song that includes a number.”

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British rock band Queen are not just legendary music icons, but their music is a big part pf pop culture. From We Will Rock You to We Are the Champions to Bohemian Rhapsody, their music is timeless, encompassing generations.

Any mention of their contributions to pop culture wouldn’t be complete without the world-wide hit, Another One Bites the Dust. Released in October of 1980, it spent three weeks at number one. The song spent 15 weeks in the Billboard top 10 (the longest running top ten song of 1980), including 13 weeks in the top five, and 31 weeks total on the chart (more than any other song in 1980).

Another One Bites the Dust won an American Music Award for Favorite Rock Single and also garnered a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

FUN FACTS:

• Another One Bites the Dust is credited as Queen’s best-selling single, with sales of over 7 million copies.
• John Deacon’s bass line was inspired by Good Times by the disco group Chic.
• The song was used in a preliminary cut of Rocky III, before being replaced by Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger.
• The music video for Another One Bites the Dust was filmed at Reunion Arena in Dallas, Texas.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

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Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Couple/Together/Us.”

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While it doesn’t contain any of this week’s words prompts, my SLS choice is indeed about two people… a couple.

Much like her Grammy-winning I Will Always Love You was a cover of a Dolly Parton hit, Whitney Houston’s 1996 top five pop hit was also a cover.

I Believe in You and Me was first released by the Four Tops in 1983. While it failed to reach the US Top 40, it became a moderate hit for the group on the US Billboard R&B chart, peaking at number 40 in early 1983.

In 1996, Whitney recorded a cover of the song for her film The Preacher’s Wife and released it as a single. Following its release, the song charted on the Billboard Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, and R&B boards in the US, also peaking on music charts worldwide.

Houston was known as “The Voice” and due to the bigger success of her version, I Believe in You and Me is most popularly known as a Whitney Houston song. However, the song’s co-composer David Wolfert, stated in a 2001 interview that young songwriters, referring to the song, told him: “Oh, you wrote that Whitney song.” He stated, “I said, ‘That’s not really a Whitney song,’ and play them the (Four Tops) original. Their mouths drop open. No one is going to sing that song like Levi—ever.”

FUN FACTS:

• I Believe in You and Me, the first single from The Preacher’s Wife Soundtrack, debuted at number seven and number six, on the US Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B Singles charts, the issue date of December 28, 1996, respectively.
•  Houston received a Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for her performance of the song at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards on February 25, 1998.
• The single was certified Platinum for the shipments of 1,000,000 copies or more by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on February 4, 1997, becoming Houston’s fourth Platinum single.
• Houston starred in the holiday comedy The Preacher’s Wife, with Denzel Washington. She plays the gospel-singing wife of a pastor (Courtney B. Vance). It was largely an updated remake of the 1948 film The Bishop’s Wife, which starred Loretta Young, David Niven and Cary Grant.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

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Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Burrito/Fajita/Mexican/Tequila.”

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I chose a song this week in keeping with the spirit of the prompts and Cinco de Mayo!

Ranked No. 1 on Billboard’s All Time Latin Songs, No. 7 on Billboard’s All Time Top 100, and VH1’s “#1 Greatest One-Hit Wonder of All Time,” Los del Rio’s Macarena is the song and dance craze that took the world by storm in the 1990s.

As a result of their lounge act, Los del Río were invited to tour South America in 1992 and, while visiting Venezuela, they were invited to a private party held by the Venezuelan empresario Gustavo Cisneros. During the celebration, a local flamenco teacher performed a dance for the guests, and Los del Río were pleasantly surprised by Cubillán’s dance skills. Spontaneously, Antonio Romero Monge, one half of the Los del Río duo, recited the song’s chorus-to-be on the spot. When the authors wrote the song, they changed the name to Macarena, in honor to Antonio’s daughter Esperanza Macarena.

The Bayside Boys released an English-language version in 1995 that became a worldwide sensation, reaching the top of the charts in more than a dozen countries and landing in the top ten in several others.

However, it was the Latin version that could be heard from elementary school dances to night clubs to wedding receptions. Most English-speakers had no idea about how risque the lyrics are.

In the song, the Macarena is a word used to describe a woman who is attempting to get men to come and dance with her.

If she likes their moves, the Macarena claims she’s happy to take them home after the night out.

The first verse begins: “When I dance they call me Macarena, and the boys they say ‘que estoy buena’

“They all want me, they can’t have me. Move with me, jam with me.

“And if you’re good I’ll take you home with me.”

While the first verse is a little cheeky, the song gets even raunchier as it goes on.

The main singer admits that even though she is enjoying the male attention on the dancefloor, she already has a boyfriend who is called Vittorino.

The lyrics assure: “Now, don’t you worry ‘bout my boyfriend, the boy whose name is Vittorino.

“Ha, I don’t want him, couldn’t stand him, he was no good so I.”

FUN FACTS:

• The “Bayside Boys Mix” version’s meaning is later revealed to be about a woman who cheats on her boyfriend while he is being drafted into the army.
• The Bayside Boys remix hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1996 and remained at the top of the chart for fourteen weeks.
• The song stayed in the Hot 100 chart for 60 weeks, the longest reign among No. 1 songs, only surpassed fifteen years later by Adele’s Rolling in the Deep.

While the Bayside Boys’ version is the more popular in the music world, I prefer Los Del Rios, and the video is a live performance from a Spanish-language show.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

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Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Alone/Confined/Depressed/Isolated/Restless/Solo.”

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Kelly Clarkson originally wrote Because of You when she was 16 years old to cope with the emotional distress caused by her parents’ divorce. The song explores the pain of Clarkson’s deteriorating relationship with her father and the isolation she felt from both parents.

She wanted the song to be included on her debut studio album, Thankful (2003), but her record label rejected the song. She then polished the song with David Hodges and Ben Moody (both from Evanescence) before successfully convincing her label to include it on her second album, Breakaway, in 2005.

Because of You peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold over 2 million digital downloads in the United States. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

FUN FACTS:

• Because of You became Clarkson’s biggest success in Europe, topping the European Hot 100 Singles chart. It also reached number one in Brazil, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland, as well as the top ten in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
• Because of You won in the category for Best Female Video at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards.
• In 2007, the song was recorded by Reba McEntire as a duet with Clarkson, which was released as a lead single for McEntire’s twenty-fourth studio album Reba: Duets.

Clarkson wrote the treatment for the accompanying video herself in order to reflect the pain that she felt due to her parents’ divorce. The video’s plot centers on Clarkson engaging in a heated argument with her husband in front of her child before realizing that she was repeating her parents’ mistake.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

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Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Home Town or City where you were born, or where lived in, or some place that you relate to.”

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Pasadena, California will always be a special place to me because it’s where my late husband and I married and lived for almost twenty years. All three of our children were born in Huntington Memorial Hospital and attended schools in the Pasadena Unified School District.

The city is home to the world famous Rose Bowl Stadium and hosts the Tournament of Roses Parade every January 1st. My father-in-law had a camper and would rent a spot along the parade route. He, my husband and the kids would spend the night–along with hundreds of thousands of other people–on Colorado Blvd and wake to a front row parade seat. My mother-in-law would join them in the morning. I watched the parade on television because cramming 1.5 million people into a narrow five and a half miles was not–and still isn’t–my idea of a good time. I could hear the marching bands from my living room. That was festive enough for me! 😀

As much as I loved southern California, I hated driving there… but you cannot live there without driving! I worked in the next city over – Glendale – and family, friends, and favorite spots of recreation were scattered from Canyon Country to Venice Beach, so I was well acquainted with the freeways, or as I used to call them… parking lots! 😀

You don’t have to drive far on so-Cal freeways to encounter just about every type of driver–rude, selfish, distracted, slow, and just plain dumb.

And then there are the speeders, who are not always what you expect.

Driving in the northeast Los Angeles County area, particularly in aging communities like Glendale, Altadena, and Pasadena, odds were good that you’d be rear-ended at least once, only to turn around and see this Buick Roadmaster smashed into your back end and a wrinkled little dear in a color-coordinated skirt-suit gingerly disembarking and muttering, “This is my husband’s car, see. My foot could barely reach the brake pedal.” Oh, and every year a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade gets held up by a granny who couldn’t read the detour signs and just blunders right into a marching band. Fun times.

That’s the moment which Jan and Dean chose to parody with The Little Old Lady from Pasadena in 1964, right at the tail end of the time when doo-wop surf music was on its way out. It’s just as well; Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys tended to be blended together so much that nobody could tell one from the other. Today, all surf-era music is made by the Beach Boys as far as the public mind is concerned, and bands like The Sunrays, The Rivieras, and Jan and Dean are forever consigned to their shadow, even though Jan and Dean predate the Beach Boys and the same guy (Roger Christian) wrote many songs for both.

The song reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1964 and number one on Canada’s RPM chart.

FUN FACTS:

• One parade I never missed was the popular Doo Dah Parade, an annual event satirizing the Rose Parade which originated in Old Pasadena in 1978. It was held a month before Christmas and attracted local residents for a day of fun with lots of local vendors setup for business. Most years, we sat right on the curb just to get hit with shaving cream and tortillas. (You had to be there!) However the event gained national notoriety (think Synchronized Briefcase Drill Team) and has been held in January and May, and in other nearby cities.
• Pasadena is also home to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) (managed for NASA by Caltech) has a  Pasadena mailing address but is actually located in nearby LaCanada-Flintridge.
• In addition to the annual New Year’s Day Rose Bowl game and a College Football Playoff semi-final game every three years, the Rose Bowl, a national historic landmark, is the home field for the UCLA Bruins football team, has hosted five Super Bowls and many BCS National Championship games including soccer games during the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

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Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Diamond/Emerald/Jade/Pearl/Ruby/Sapphire.”

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One of six consecutive top 5 singles for the legendary Motown group, Jackson 5, Mama’s Pearl went to number two for two weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971.

On the R&B soul singles chart, the song likewise peaked at number two. Overseas, Mama’s Pearl peaked at #25 in the UK.

FUN FACTS:

• Mama’s Pearl was originally called Guess Who’s Making Whoopie (With Your Girlfriend).
• The co-writers of Mama’s Pearl included Motown head, Berry Gordy, Jr. The songwriting team was dubbed The Corporation, and helped the group score four consecutive #1 singles.
• Two of the Jackson 5’s recordings (ABC and I Want You Back) are among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll and, alongside I’ll Be There, were also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

~~~

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Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Birthday/Cake/Gift/Party/Surprise.”

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Released in September of 1982, Luther Vandross’ sophomore album, Forever, for Always, for Love, was his second album to chart in the top 20 on the Billboard 200 and his second album to top the R&B Albums chart where it spent three weeks.

The album was certified Platinum by the RIAA, and earned Vandross his third nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male, but Marvin Gaye won for his song, Sexual Healing.

The first release from the album, Bad Boy /Having a Party, became a top five R&B hit which peaked to number-three on the Hot R&B Singles chart, and reached #55 on the Billboard Hot 100… and it became a party anthem that can still be heard at class reunions, wedding receptions, family reunions, Christmas parties and cookouts almost forty years later!

The song is about a teenage boy, grounded for staying out too late, who decides to sneak out of his home to attend the party of the year.

FUN FACTS:

• The bridge samples the chorus from the Sam Cooke song Having a Party, but with new lyrics added to the end (“you can’t go”).
• The song was featured during the opening credits of the 1990 film House Party.
• Before he began a successful solo career, Vandross sang backing vocals for many top artists including Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Ben E. King, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, and Donna Summer, and for the bands Mandrill, Chic and Todd Rundgren’s Utopia.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

~~~

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Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

This week’s theme is  “Touch/Feel.”

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While we’re much maligned these days by younger generations, I love being a boomer. We’ve seen and experienced more than any generation in modern times, and no other generation will probably ever get the opportunities we’ve had.

Technically, baby boomers were born from 1946 through 1964 and came of age from 1964 through 1982. We can remember when there were no microwaves, cellphones, or Internet.  Our first televisions were boxy with a picture tube and broadcast in black white.  Seat belts weren’t standard in automobiles… but ashtrays in the back seat were.

In my opinion, we also had the best music. From post-war quartets to high energy disco, some of the best songs and biggest artists happened during the boomer’s heydays.

And we listened to our music in more ways than any other generation. We had vinyl in 78, 33, or 45 speeds, reel-to-reel tape, 8-track tape, AM radio, cassette tape, CD, MP3, and now we stream from our phones and tablets. I haven’t met a boomer yet who hasn’t mentioned their favorite songs from back-in-the-day AND how they listened to it. A former coworker could never mention her beloved Beach Boys without including a mention for the stacks of 45s and her pink record player. An old neighbor loved Saturday nights in the park… with Motown hits on 8-track.

I was a typical preteen/teen girl, accumulating 45s as fast as I could. Somewhere in my mid teens, I switched to buying albums only, regardless of song or artist and amassed quite a collection. However, with going away to school and moving around the country, moving my albums with me was becoming work. I switched to audio cassettes, but can still remember the last three vinyl albums I bought; Funkadelic’s One Nation Under a Groove, Heatwave’s Central Heating, and Barbra Streisand’s Wet.

I can’t remember the song that hooked me on Barbra Streisand, but I do know I was in grade school. I was mesmerized by her big voice and ability to hold a note!

Wet was her twenty-first studio album, and probably best remembered for the #1 duet with disco queen, Donna Summer, No More Tears (Enough Is Enough). I loved that song but my favorite cut on the album has always been Kiss Me in the Rain.

In the song, the singer has reached a point in life where because of disappointment or simple ennui, they long for the innocence and feelings of their youth. It’s a really beautiful song I fell in love with while still in my teens and all these years later, it still feels timeless.

FUN FACTS:

• While it didn’t receive a wide release, Wet was an Adult Contemporary Top Ten hit.
• Wet is a concept album of sorts with all the songs referring to, or expressing different interpretations of, water. Wet is also the first and the last word sung on the album.
• The studio musicians on Wet was a melting pot of amazing talent like  Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro from the rock band, Toto, Grammy winner Larry Carlton, super music producer and composer David Foster, composer Lalo Schifrin, best known for the original theme from Mission Impossible, and composer Marvin Hamlisch, one of only fifteen people to win Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. This collection of all four is referred to as an “EGOT”. He is one of only two people (along with composer Richard Rodgers) to have won those four prizes and a Pulitzer Prize (“PEGOT”).

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for FeliciaDenise.com.

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

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