70's, 80's 'Feel Good' Music

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Solid is the eleventh studio album recorded by American vocal duo Ashford & Simpson, released in 1984 on the Capitol label. The album features the song "Solid", which became the songwriting duo's biggest hit as performers.
The album peaked at No. 1 on the US R&B albums chart. It also reached No. 29 on the Billboard 200. The album's title track peaked at No. 1 on the Hot Black Singles chart, No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart. Also featured are two other chart singles: "Outta the World" and "Babies".

Ashford & Simpson - Solid
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Vince Vance & The Valiants - All I Want for Christmas Is You
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"Move Closer" is a song by American singer-songwriter Phyllis Nelson, which topped the charts in the United Kingdom in April 1985.
Nelson wrote the ballad in 1984. It was a complete departure from the type of music she had been recording; she had been recording dance and disco records, and decided to write her own record because, in her words, "not much music lets you dance close". The lyrics of "Move Closer" were based on a long-term love affair she had with a much younger man in Philadelphia, who was struggling to start his own computer business.
While "Move Closer" failed to make an impact on the US Billboard Hot 100, the song was hugely successful in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at the top of the UK Singles Chart, making her the first black woman to top the charts in Britain with her own sole composition. The song was originally released in April 1984 but failed to chart, and was re-released in February 1985 after BBC Radio London started to play it. Move Closer also benefited from extensive airplay on the hugely successful offshore pirate station, Laser 558. The song began to climb the charts, taking 12 weeks to reach the top spot. "Move Closer" remained on the UK Singles Chart for just over five months during 1985, becoming Britain's seventh biggest-selling song of the year. and the 82nd highest selling single of the decade. In 1994 it was reissued and returned to the UK Singles Chart, this time peaking at number 34, on the back of it being featured in an anti-persperant television commercial.
The song was also featured in the British film The Supergrass (1985)

Phyllis Nelson - Move Closer
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"Boys (Summertime Love)" is a song recorded by Italian singer Sabrina. It was released in May 1987 as the third single from her eponymous album and achieved great success in many countries, including Spain, Switzerland, Germany, France and Italy, where it was a number-one single. It was Sabrina's first single to be released in the UK, where it reached number 3 in June 1988.
The song was re-released as a remixed version twice: in France in 1995, retitled as "Boys '95", and in 2003 as "Boys Boys Boys (The Dance Remixes)".
Part of the success of the song is due to its music video, filmed at the Florida hotel in Jesolo (Veneto, Italy). In it, Sabrina splashes about in a swimming pool, while her bikini top keeps sliding down, thus repeatedly revealing varying shares of her nipples. As a result, the BBC added black bars around the image when the video was aired on Top of the Pops in June 1988, effectively cropping it into widescreen. It remains one of the most downloaded videoclips on the Internet.
During an interview with Nino Firetto on the Music Box program on Super Channel in late 1988, Sabrina explained that the video for "Boys" was originally created to be a segment in a magazine show. This was Sabrina's explanation of why its style more closely matched that of Italian magazine shows of the time (more overtly sexualised) than that of the traditional music video.
The song was a big hit in France, staying for five weeks at number one. The single debuted at number 29 and remained on the French SNEP Singles Chart for 25 weeks from December 12, 1987 to May 28, 1988. Sabrina was the only pin-up girl at that time to reach the top of the charts in France, as opposed to the French Lova Moor and the British Samantha Fox. Certified Gold disc by the SNEP, the single was the first number one by an Italian singer. According to the Infodisc Website, the song is the 292nd best-selling single of all time in France, with 683,000 copies sold. It also reached number three in the UK Singles Chart (despite, or perhaps because of, the video's ban[citation needed] there) and number 11 in Australia in 1988. It also reached #6 in South Africa.

Sabrina - Boys


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"Try Again" is a 1983 song by American contemporary R&B group Champaign. Released in March of that year as the only single from their album Modern Heart, this ballad peaked at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Champaign - Try Again
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Gonzalez were a British R&B and funk band. They became well known as a backing band for touring R&B, funk and soul stars. Their eponymous album was released in 1974 and they recorded a total of six albums before disbanding in 1986, and are best known for their 1979 single success with their worldwide disco hit, "Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet"

Gonzalez - Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet

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Pat and Mick were a British vocal duo, consisting of popular radio personalities Pat Sharp and Mick Brown, both of whom are from London. They released a charity single, a cover version, each year from 1988 to 1993, achieving a top 10 hit with their 1989 single "I Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet". The royalties from their record sales were donated to Capital FM's 'Help A London Child' charity. All their singles were produced by Stock Aitken & Waterman, except "Shake Your Groove Thing" and "Hot Hot Hot", both of which were produced by Stock & Waterman. With their last single released in 1993, they have no immediate plans to collaborate on future charity singles. In 1993, they released their only album "Don't Stop Dancin'", which compiled all their singles and b-sides on a continuous mix.
In 2010, Pat & Mick appeared on the Identity Parade round on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, however Phill Jupitus's team were only asked to identify Mick.
In 2011, Sharp entered I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!. Also in 2011, iTunes re-released "I Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet".
In November 2011, Brown started hosting the 'Drive Time' and 'Saturday Breakfast' radio show on 107.8 Radio Jackie, while Sharp presented the Weekend Breakfast slot on Smooth Radio.

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Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart
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"Love Shack" is a single by American new wave band The B-52's from their 1989 album Cosmic Thing. It was released on June 20, 1989 and produced by Don Was. The song was a comeback of sorts for the band following their decline in popularity in the mid-1980s and the death of guitarist Ricky Wilson in 1985.
"Love Shack" is considered the band's signature song and has been a concert staple since its release. Commercially, the single topped the charts in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand and reached number two on the UK Singles Chart, number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 (becoming their first Top 40 hit), and number five on the Canadian RPM Top Singles chart. It also became a top-twenty hit in Belgium and the Netherlands.

The B-52's - Love Shack
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"I Can Lose My Heart Tonight" is the first single by pop singer C. C. Catch from her debut studio album Catch the Catch, released in 1985 by Hansa. It was written by Dieter Bohlen for Modern Talking, but he thought that it wasn't good enough for the band. It peaked at #13 in Germany.
"I Can Lose My Heart Tonight" was remixed and released in 1999 as a single, which peaked at #72 in Germany.

C.C. Catch - I Can Lose My Heart Tonight
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"You Are the Woman" is the title of a 1976 Top Ten hit by Firefall. Written by Rick Roberts, then the group's frontman, the track is distinguished by the performance on flute of Firefall member David Muse.
Roberts would recall writing "You Are the Woman": "When that chorus and tune jumped into my head I realized I was [not] creating...one of the great works of art in history...[but rather] a bouncy little pop ditty...I was stumped for several months about where the verses should go [ie. develop] lyrically. Then I realized I was over thinking it. I took a more simple approach, and the verses were finished in a day or two."
Steve Heflin recalls that right after the song jumped into Rick's head, a group of his friends were fortunate to have him sing it for them. Steve Heflin, Chris Wienard, and Janet Cooper, were gathered around Rick who was sitting on the arm of an over stuffed chair in Chris' apartment in Boulder Colorado. Rick sang that song and played the guitar, and amazed us with its beauty.
Introduced on Firefall, the band's debut album recorded at Miami's Criteria Studios and released in the spring of 1976, "You Are the Woman" was issued as the album's second single that summer after several other tracks had received airplay on FM radio including the lead single: "Livin' Ain't Livin'", which had just missed the Top 40 of the Hot 100 in Billboard. After two months of support in smaller markets, "You Are the Woman" broke in such larger areas as Chicago and Houston in October 1976, affecting a Top 40 entry with a subsequent ascent to a #9 peak that November. "You Are the Woman" also peaked at #6 on the Easy Listening chart.
Jock Bartley of Firefall would account for the popularity of "You Are the Woman" thus: "Every female between the ages of 18 and 24 wanted to be the woman portrayed in the song, and that caused their boyfriends and spouses to call radio stations and subsequently flood the airwaves with dedications of the song and the sentiment. The message was simple and sincere, and the song was easy to sing. It was like our fans let us be a singing version of the Hallmark card that said what they weren't quite sure what to express."
Bartley, the sole founding member of Firefall who has remained with the group to the present (though, as of 2015, Muse and founding bassist Mark Andes have rejoined), also states: "Everybody knows 'You Are The Woman'. It ended up kind of being a hindrance because people would only hear 'You Are The Woman' and would think, oh, that light Rock band from Colorado. We're actually a pretty smokin' Rock band that really has fun onstage and cooks and jams and plays 'You Are The Woman' also."
A hit for Firefall in Canada (#6) and New Zealand (#15), "You Are the Woman" was remade by Josh Kelley for the Herbie: Fully Loaded soundtrack (2005)

Firefall - "You Are the Woman"


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Celi Bee (born Celida Ines Camacho, New York City) is an American disco musician.
Bee is a New York-born singer of Puerto Rican Parents. Born in New York, she initially relocated back to Puerto Rico with her parents. There she met Pepe Luis Soto in Puerto Rico in the 1960s and they began making music together. In 1972, she won a festival called Festival De La Voz y La Cancion, with the song, "Yo Quiero Un Pincel. She was initially popular in Spain, and Puerto Rico where her single, "Half A Love", became successful.
In 1977 she signed a recording contract with TK Records, whilst Soto wrote a song called "Superman", which coincided with the release of the film of the same name. The song became a hit, reaching #3 on the US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play Singles chart, #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #86 on the R&B chart. The album, Celi Bee and the Buzzy Bunch, an extended six track set, reached #39 on the R&B listing and #169 on the main Billboard 200 album chart. Other tracks off the album included "One Love", "Smile", "Its Sad", "Closer Closer" and "Hurt Me Hurt Me". The Buzzy Bunch were her backing group, composed of only Soto and his studio musicians. "Superman" later became a hit for Herbie Mann (#26, Hot 100).
Bee's next album was Alternating Currents (1978). This featured the hits, "Macho (a Real Real One)", which made #23 on the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, "Hold Your Horses, Babe" which peaked at #72 in the UK Singles Chart in June 1978, and "Coming Up Strong". The album sleeve featured Bee alone without the Buzzy Bunch. Ullanda McCullough sang as a backing vocalist, and the strings were arranged by Irving Spice. Her follow-up album, Fly Me on the Wings of Love 's title track peaked at #16 on the US Dance chart. The album also featured "Boomerang" and "For the Love of My Man", the former written by Bee. Her final album was Blow My Mind (1980), whose title track reached #29 in the US Dance chart. Around this time, Soto and Bee divorced.
Like so many disco artists, the popularity of Celi Bee waned in the 1980s. However she did continue to record with sporadic singles like "I'm Free" (1983) and an album Like Water and Sand (1986). The disco albums she released have all been re-released on CD, firstly by Hot Productions and, more recently, on Disconnected.
In February 2007, her greatest hits compilation album was issued by Disconnected.

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Wild Cherry was an American funk rock band best known for their song "Play That Funky Music".
Rob Parissi (lead vocals and guitar) was raised in the steel mill town of Mingo Junction, Ohio. He graduated from Mingo High School in 1968, and formed the band Wild Cherry in 1970 in Steubenville, Ohio. The band's name 'Wild Cherry' was taken from a box of cough drops.[4] The band played the Ohio Valley region, the Northern West Virginia panhandle, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The original lineup included Ben Difabbio (drums and vocals) and Louie Osso (guitar, lead and background vocals) from Steubenville, Larry Brown (bass, lead and background vocals) from Weirton, West Virginia, and Larry Mader (keyboards, lead and background vocals) from East Springfield, Ohio. Over time, the band members changed; Osso, Brown, and Mader leaving the band, and were replaced by Parissi's cousin, Coogie Stoddart (guitar, lead and background vocals) and Joe Buchmelter (bass). Buchmelter was soon replaced by Bucky Lusk.
In the early 1970s, several records were released under their own label including "You Can Be High (But Lay Low)", and "Something Special On Your Mind", in 1971. The music at this stage was pure rock music. Wild Cherry eventually gained a record contract with Brown Bag Records, owned and operated by the late Terry Knight. Brown Bag produced several demos and singles that were later distributed by United Artists including "Get Down" (1973) and "Show Me Your Badge" (1973).
The band broke up and Parissi left the music scene temporarily. He re-formed the band in 1975.

Wild Cherry - Play That Funky Music



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A Taste of Honey - Boogie Oogie Oogie
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"Kiss Me Goodbye" is a Les Reed/ Barry Mason composition recorded in 1968 by Petula Clark.
Having remade "Kiss Me Goodbye" and several other hits for her 1986 Jango CD Give It a Try, Clark cut the similarly styled This Is My Song Album for the Dutch Dino label in 1988 and that album's version of "Kiss Me Goodbye" - entitled "Kiss Me Goodbye 88" - became a hit in the Netherlands reaching #13 that spring remaining the most recent appearance of a first-time release by Clark on a major singles chart until "Downtown" by the Saw Doctors featuring Petula Clark reached #2 on the Irish chart in December 2011. (In the autumn of 1988 Clark did have an international hit with "Downtown 88" which was a remix of the original 1964 recording of "Downtown".)

Petula Clark - Kiss Me Goodbye


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"Torn Between Two Lovers" is a song written by Peter Yarrow (of the folk music trio Peter, Paul & Mary) and Phillip Jarrell. The song describes a love triangle and laments that "loving both of you is breaking all the rules". Mary MacGregor recorded it at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1976. The song became the title track of her first album.
"Torn Between Two Lovers" reached No. 1 on both the U.S. pop chart in February 1977 as well as the Easy Listening chart in the final week of 1976 and first week of 1977. It also reached No. 1 on the Canadian charts. The song also peaked at No. 3 on the country charts of both nations. In early 1977, the song peaked at No. 4 in the United Kingdom.

Mary MacGregor - Torn Between Two Lovers
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"I Don't Like to Sleep Alone" is a song written by Paul Anka and performed by Anka featuring Odia Coates. It reached #1 on the Canadian pop chart and #8 on both the U.S. pop chart and the U.S adult contemporary chart in 1975. It was featured on his 1975 album Feelings.
The song was arranged by Jimmie Haskell and produced by Rick Hall.
The song was nominated for the Juno Award for Single of the Year in 1976, but lost to "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman–Turner Overdrive.
The song ranked #72 on Billboard magazine's Top 100 singles of 1975.

Paul Anka - I don't like to sleep alone
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"Don't Cry Out Loud" is a song written in 1976 by Peter Allen with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager that is best known as a hit single for Melissa Manchester in the US and for Elkie Brooks in the UK.
Rita Coolidge's performance of "Don't Cry Out Loud" took the Grand Prize at the Tokyo Music Festival held on June 17, 1979, with Coolidge's album featuring the track and named for it becoming a Top 20 Japanese bestseller that summer.
Elkie Brooks released a version of the song for the UK market with Gus Dudgeon producing. Brooks' "Don't Cry Out Loud" reached its number 12 peak on the UK Top 50 dated 16 December 1978—two weeks before Manchester's version reached the US Top 40— and was also a hit in Ireland (number 14). Brooks' "Don't Cry Out Loud" was not featured on its singer's 1979 album release Live and Learn instead making a belated debut as an album track on Brook's all time bestseller Pearls released in 1981. The song would later serve as title track for Brooks' 2005 live album release cut in 2004. In 2009 Brooks stated: "Many years ago I was persuaded to do a lot of songs I wasn't particularly keen on. 'Don't Cry Out Loud' was one of them—but over the years I have [grown] to like it!"

Melissa Manchester - Don't Cry Out Loud





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"The Power of Love" is a song co-written and originally recorded by Jennifer Rush in 1984. It has been covered by several artists, most notably by Air Supply, Celine Dion and Laura Branigan.
Rush's original version, released in her native United States at the end of 1984 and in Europe during 1985, went to number one in the United Kingdom in October 1985 and became the biggest-selling single of the year in that country. It was also a number one single in several other European countries, as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Dion's version went to number one in the United States, Canada and Australia in 1994. The song has been translated into several languages, becoming a pop standard.
"The Power of Love" was first recorded by Jennifer Rush for her 1984 eponymous album. It was released as a single in West Germany in December 1984. In June 1985, "The Power of Love" was issued as a single in the United Kingdom, where it topped the chart for five weeks in October 1985 and became the best-selling single of the year. As of March 2017, it has sold 1.45 million copies in the UK.
The massive success of "The Power of Love" in the UK followed with widespread international success for the single in the last months of 1985 and the first of 1986, including a German re-release with a resultant number-nine charting. Eventually "The Power of Love" reached number one in Australia, Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa and Spain (where Rush topped the chart with a version in Spanish called "Si tú eres mi hombre y yo tu mujer", translated as "If you are my man and I'm your woman"), number three in Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium, and number seven in the Netherlands.
CBS held off on releasing "The Power of Love" in North America feeling the disc was too European. It finally saw release in the United States and Canada in January 1986 but despite rising to number one in Canada, "The Power of Love" failed to become a significant US hit, stalling at number fifty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100 on the week-ending of 5 April 1986 and spending 13 weeks within the Hot 100. The song was performed by Rush on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in March 1986 and American Bandstand in April 1986.

Jennifer Rush The Power Of Love
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"The Riddle" is a song by the English singer-songwriter Nik Kershaw. It was released in 1984 as the lead single from the album of the same name. Kershaw described the lyrical content as being nondescript to fill as a "guide vocal" for the production. It reached number three on the UK Singles Chart and peaked within the top 10 in countries like Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. An accompanying music video was made for the song and features references to Lewis Carroll's book Alice in Wonderland. The song was covered by many artists, most notably by Gigi D'Agostino (1999) and Jack Holiday and Mike Candys (2012).
The "riddling" lyrics caused speculation among listeners as to their meaning; Kershaw states that there is in fact no intended meaning at all, the words simply being a "guide vocal" thrown together to fit the music. Kershaw has stated: "In short, 'The Riddle' is nonsense, rubbish, bollocks, the confused ramblings of an 80s popstar.
The music video to "The Riddle" depicts Kershaw walking through a house shaped like a question mark, making his way through certain obstacles and looking through drawers while singing. The video depicts many references to Lewis Carroll's book Alice in Wonderland with an appearance of young girl exiting the room through a small door, two portly gentlemen who resemble Tweedledum and Tweedledee and an observation made by Kershaw to Through the Looking Glass.
At the beginning of the music video Kershaw is seen trying to get through a door with a screwdriver. The video ends with the camera moving up away from Kershaw to reveal that the question mark is lying in the street, at which point a man in a green costume seen earlier in the video comes and picks it up. The green man is the Riddler, a villain from the Batman comics. Kershaw claimed the video was inspired by his love for post-modern artistic expressionism.

Nik Kershaw - The Riddle
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"Don't Go" is a song by British synth-pop band Yazoo. It was released in 1982 as the second single from their debut album, Upstairs at Eric's.
Released in the UK in July 1982, the song peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Yazoo's second top 5 hit. In the US, where the band was known as Yaz, the song was their second big hit on the American dance chart, where it spent two weeks at number one in October 1982. Their first American dance chart hit was "Situation", which had also gone to number one on this chart earlier the same year. The music video for the song features band members Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke in a sort of haunted mansion. The song is featured in the 1989 film Tango & Cash, in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories on the radio station Wave 103, and appears in Dance Dance Revolution II. The song re-entered the UK Dance Chart on 13 December 2009 at number 30, peaking at number 15 on 2 January 2010.
Ian Birch of Smash Hits considered "Don't Go" to be a "sharp successor" to "Only You". He commented: "Vince coaxes a sterling song out of his synthesizer while Alf balances its metallic clip with a deep, emotion-packed vocal that gets better with every hearing"

Yazoo - Don't Go


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