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

"I Just Wanna Stop" is a song by Canadian singer/songwriter Gino Vannelli. Released as a single in 1978, the song is his biggest hit single to date, reaching number one in his native Canada and number four on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. It appears on his sixth album, Brother to Brother. The song was produced by the three brothers Gino, Joe and Ross Vannelli, and written by Ross.

Gino Vannelli - I just wanna stop
 
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Music video
The song's music video was shown frequently on MTV, introducing the revamped Yes lineup and sound to a new generation of fans largely unfamiliar with the band's very different earlier work, which had helped to define the genre of progressive rock. The music video was directed by graphic designer Storm Thorgerson who, as part of Hipgnosis, had previously designed the covers for the band's albums Going for the One and Tormato. The video starred actor Danny Webb.
Keyboardist Tony Kaye does not appear in the video as at the time of the video shoot, Eddie Jobson was standing in as the band's keyboardist. Jobson can be seen briefly in a few quick shots, but he was not part of the video's "animal transformation" scene in which the other four band members take part. Ultimately, Kaye returned to the lineup and Jobson never recorded any material with the band.
The video was filmed in London, with some scenes filmed on top of various buildings. Scenes of the band playing are also present.


Yes - Owner Of a Lonely Heart


 
"Against the Wind" is a song by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band from the 1980 album Against the Wind. Released as the second single from the album, it peaked at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100
During an interview on WWFX, "100 FM The Pike", Bob Seger said that "Against the Wind" came about from his days as a high-school cross country runner. He described the song as "about trying to move ahead, keeping your sanity and integrity at the same time." The "Jan" Seger references in the opening lyrics of the song refers to Jan Dinsdale, with whom he had a long-term relationship from 1972 until 1983. In Rolling Stone, Seger elaborated on the song's meaning:

Jan says to me all the time, ‘You allow more people to walk on you than anybody I’ve ever known.’ And I always say it’s human nature that people are gonna love you sometimes and they’re gonna use you sometimes. Knowing the difference between when people are using you and when people truly care about you, that’s what ‘Against the Wind‘ is all about. The people in that song have weathered the storm, and it’s made them much better that they’ve been able to do it and maintain whatever relationship. To get through is a real victory.
The line "Let the cowboys ride!" towards the song's end is a reference to the closing lyrics of the song "Santa Fe/Beautiful Obsession" by Van Morrison.
Seger later said that the line "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" bothered him for a while, but that everyone he knew loved it, so he left it in. He also said that it has since appeared in several other hits by other artists, so that proved it was an acceptable lyric.
Music critic Maury Dean described the theme as being about aging and dealing with "all the burdens we'll ever have to face.

Bob Seger - Against the wind
 
"Give It Up" is a song by American disco group KC and the Sunshine Band, although it was simply credited as KC in many countries, including the US. Following the backlash against many disco artists on the charts at the beginning of the 1980s, the song was a comeback hit for the act in the US. Epic Records refused to release it; however, the independent Meca Records label showed its support and the song peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1984. The song had been an even bigger hit in the UK several months earlier, where it had hit No. 1 for three weeks in August 1983. It went on to become the 18th best-selling single of the year in the UK. It was the last of the band's hits in the US and UK, and the most successful of its 10 UK hits.
KC - Give It Up
 
"Daydream Believer" is a song composed by John Stewart shortly before he left the Kingston Trio. It was originally recorded by The Monkees, with Davy Jones singing the lead. The single reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1967, remaining there for four weeks, and peaked at No. 5 in the UK Singles Chart. It was the Monkees' last No. 1 hit in the U.S.
In 1979, "Daydream Believer" was recorded by Canadian singer Anne Murray, whose version reached No. 3 on the U.S. country singles chart and No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song has been recorded by others, including a 1971 version by John Stewart himself.
Stewart said that it was supposed to be the third in a trilogy of songs about suburban life. Married couples start out in an idealistic haze, but after a few years it wears off, and each sees the other as he or she really is. This is, supposedly, when genuine love is proven.

Anne Murray - Daydream Believer


 
"December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" is a song by the Four Seasons, written by original Four Seasons keyboard player Bob Gaudio and his future wife Judy Parker, produced by Gaudio, and included on the group's album, Who Loves You (1975).
The song features drummer Gerry Polci on lead vocals, with the usual lead Frankie Valli singing the bridge sections and backing vocals, and bass player Don Ciccone (former lead singer of The Critters) singing the falsetto part (And I felt a rush like a rolling ball of thunder / Spinning my head around and taking my body under).
The single was released in December 1975 and hit number one on the UK Singles Chart on February 21, 1976. It repeated the feat on the US Billboard Hot 100 on March 13, 1976, remaining in the top spot for three weeks and one week on Cash Box. Billboard ranked it as the No. 4 song for 1976. On April 10 the same year, it topped the RPM National Top Singles Chart in Canada. It was the Four Seasons' final song, as a group, to reach number one. (Valli would have one final chart-topper as a solo act in 1978 with the theme song to the film Grease.)
In 1988, Dutch DJ and producer Ben Liebrand remixed the song and re-released it as a single. In 1993, Curb Records, who released the original version of the song, picked up the 1988 remix and released it to the U.S. market. The 1993 re-release spent 27 weeks on the Hot 100 (matching the chart life of the original 1975 single). The peak position of the remix version was #14. Adding together the two 27-week chart runs for the 1975 original single and the remixed version (for a combined total of 54 weeks, two more weeks than a full year) gave the song the longest tenure ever on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart up to that time .
A music video was produced to accompany the original 1975 release. The video used the edited single version, which had a Phaser effect during Frankie's vocals, not heard on any other version of the song.

Oh What a Night - Frankie Valli


 
"Toy Soldiers" is a song by American singer Martika appearing on her 1988 eponymous debut album and released in the United States as the second single from it in May 1989. It was a number-one Billboard Hot 100 hit for two weeks in the summer of 1989. An edited version of the song is included in the imported version of the album Toy Soldiers: The Best of Martika.
Martika wrote the song about a friend who was battling a cocaine addiction. "I was a little hesitant because I had only written two songs before and they were light songs. I came up to Michael and said I wanted to write about drugs. It was the first time I got the nerve to write about something that was scary for me to talk about, so I did." According to an episode of VH-1's Pop-Up Video, in which "Toy Soldiers" was featured, the friend-in-question eventually conquered the addiction.
Martika is the lead singer throughout the song, although she is joined on the chorus by some of her former castmates from Kids Incorporated, including Renee Sands, Fergie, Rahsaan Patterson, as well as later cast members Jennifer Love Hewitt, Devyn Puett and Kimberly McCullough, as backup vocalists.
The video for the song directed by Jim Shea, who would later become a regular in directing country music videos. Unlike the actual truth about Martika's friend who she wrote the song about, in the video, he dies in a motorcycle accident (his lifeless corpse is seen twice in the video, a last minute afterthought done by Shea). Martika is seen singing with a waterfall in front of her (this was done by filming her in an empty pool with a water current flowing between her and the camera).
The song spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and New Zealand while reaching number five in both the United Kingdom and Australia. On Billboard's year-end chart for 1989, "Toy Soldiers" placed number 29. It was Martika's only number-one single in the U.S., and her highest-ranking single in the United Kingdom. The single was certified Gold in the United States by the RIAA.
In March and April 2009, VH1 ran a countdown of the 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the 80s. "Toy Soldiers" placed at #67 on the countdown despite the fact that Martika had three other top 40 hits: "More Than You Know" (#18); "I Feel the Earth Move" (#25); and "Love... Thy Will Be Done" (#10).


Martika - Toy Soldiers


 
"Living on Video" is a song by Canadian synthpop band Trans-X written and published in 1982, but not released as a single until May 1983 by Polydor Records, and re-released in 1984. It became a massive hit worldwide, as well as peaking at #61 on the Billboard Hot 100. Trans-X also recorded a French-language version under the title "Vivre sur Vidéo". The song has been covered by many artists throughout the years. It was remixed by Trans-X in 2003 and again 2006, and again by French DJ Pakito who also made it a hit.

Trans-X - Living On Video


 
"Trouble" is a song written, composed and performed by Lindsey Buckingham and released as the lead single from his 1981 debut solo album Law and Order. The single was Buckingham's first hit as a solo artist, peaking at number nine in the US and number 31 in the UK, where it remained charted for seven weeks. It was most successful in Australia, where it topped the chart for three weeks and became the eighth biggest-selling single of 1982. It experienced similar levels of success in South Africa, reaching number one for two weeks and finishing 1982 as the country's 13th best-selling single.
Buckingham approached "Trouble" differently from his other songs, wanting the song to have more of a "live feel". He recruited his Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Mick Fleetwood, to play drums. However, Buckingham believed none of the takes were solid from start to finish, so a taped loop of the drum track (about four-seconds long) was used throughout the song: "The irony of that was that the original reason for having Mick play on the song was to approach the track completely live, as opposed to my usual technique." Buckingham would later overdub some additional drum fills and cymbal crashes, in addition to other percussion instruments, creating the illusion of live drums.
George Hawkins was brought in to play bass guitar. Hawkins had worked with Fleetwood on his first solo album earlier that year. "Trouble" was the only track on "Law and Order" on which Buckingham played neither bass or drums. Buckingham was also particularly proud of the Spanish guitar solo. Some of Buckingham's vocals for the song are sung in falsetto.

Lindsey Buckingham - Trouble
 
"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" is a song written by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott and Sol Marcus for the singer and pianist Nina Simone, who first recorded it in 1964. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" has been covered by many artists, most notably by The Animals, whose blues rock version of the song became a transatlantic hit in 1965. A 1977 four-on-the-floor disco rearrangement by disco group Santa Esmeralda was also a hit.
Santa Esmeralda's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" was used as the opening theme of the 1980 pilot for the U.S. game show Bullseye, after which a sound-alike was used in regular episodes. This version of the song was also used on German ARD soccer television show Sportschau from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, in the introduction for the "goal of the month" segment. Santa Esmeralda's rendition is featured in the 1992 film American Me and the 2001 English comedy Blow Dry. It became widely popular with a later generation after its inclusion in the 2003 Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill: Volume 1, where its instrumental passage plays over the duel between The Bride and O-Ren Ishii, and the accompanying Kill Bill Vol. 1 Original Soundtrack, where it is incorporated in a full vocal form that runs over ten minutes. A rendition appears in the trailer for the 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as the 2008 Korean "ramyun western" film The Good, the Bad, the Weird, in which an instrumental cover arranged by composer Dalpalan, in the chasing sequence in the Manchurian desert.
Santa Esmeralda - Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood





 
"Tired of Toein' the Line" is a song by Rocky Burnette, who co-wrote it with Ron Coleman, former bass player of the Brothers Grim and The Everly Brothers. It was performed by Burnette, and contains lyrics detailing an imminent breakup from the point of view of a man who no longer wants to toe the line. After first appearing on the UK Official Singles Chart Top 75 in November 1979, it became an international hit after its release in the United States in May 1980, and was Burnette's only hit single.
By peaking at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, "Tired of Toein' the Line" tied "You're Sixteen", by Rocky's father Johnny Burnette, as the highest-charting Hot 100 single from a member of the Burnette family. The single was number one in Australia (for two weeks) in June 1980.

Rocky Burnette - Tired of toein' the line
 
"Just the Way You Are" is a song by Billy Joel from his fifth studio album The Stranger (1977). It was released in September 1977 as the album's lead single. It became both Joel's first US Top 10 and UK Top 20 single (reaching #3 and #19 respectively), as well as Joel's first gold single in the US. The song also topped the Billboard Easy Listening Chart for the entire month of January 1978.
"Just the Way You Are" garnered two Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1979.
Joel shared that the melody and chord progression for this song came to him while he was dreaming. In an interview on the Howard Stern Radio Show on November 16, 2010, Joel revealed that the inspiration for writing the name of the song and how it sounds in the chorus was directly taken from the last line in the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons song "Rag Doll"; which incidentally was also a larger inspiration for Joel's later song, "Uptown Girl". The song, which Joel had written for his first wife (and also his business manager at the time) Elizabeth Weber, was not liked by either Joel or his band, and Joel had originally decided against making the track a part of The Stranger, but at the request of both Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow (both were recording in other studios in the same building at the time), he agreed to put the song on the final mix. However, the album's producer, Phil Ramone, later contradicted Joel's claim, stating in an interview that they could not afford to exclude the song because Joel did not have that much material to choose from for the album. The song also shares some similarities to "I'm Not in Love" by 10cc, due to the keyboard and background vocal tape loops Joel and Ramone used.
After Joel and Weber split in 1982, Joel rarely performed the song live after 1986 until the 2000s, and Joel has publicly stated that he disliked playing the song live in the wake of his divorce from his first wife. He noted that during performances of the song around the time of his first divorce, his drummer Liberty DeVitto would jokingly parody the lyrics in the chorus as "She got the house. She got the car."
When "Just the Way You Are" was released as a single, it was shortened by over a minute. The differences are the removal of the second verse and an earlier fade. A live performance of the song was also used as a music video. On February 18, 1978, the song peaked at #3, and Joel performed a shorter version of the song as the musical guest that day on Saturday Night Live (along with "Only the Good Die Young"). The single version (fading 8 seconds later) was included in the first release of Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II, but the full album version was restored for the remastered release of that compilation.
The saxophone solo was played by Phil Woods, a well-known jazz performer and Grammy award winner. Woods was criticized by some purists[who?] in the jazz community for playing on a rock session, but in fact he had already played previously on such sessions both for Steely Dan and for Paul Simon. The performance here on a hit record undoubtedly exposed him to a wider audience and introduced his music to rock fans

Billy Joel - Just The Way You Are
 
"Killing Me Softly with His Song" is a song composed by Charles Fox with lyrics by Norman Gimbel.
The song was written in collaboration with Lori Lieberman, who recorded the song in late 1971. In 1973 it became a number-one hit in the United States and Canada for Roberta Flack, also reaching number six in the UK Singles Chart. The song has been covered by many artists; the version by the Fugees won the 1997 Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
According to Lori Lieberman, who performed the original recording in 1971, the song was born of a poem she wrote after experiencing a strong reaction to the Don McLean song "Empty Chairs", writing some poetic ideas on a napkin at the Troubadour Club after seeing him perform the song, and then relating this information to Norman Gimbel, who took her feelings and converted them into song lyrics. Gimbel passed his lyrics to Charles Fox, who set them to music.
Don McLean said he had not known that the song described his singing and, when asked about it, said "I'm absolutely amazed. I've heard both Lori's and Roberta's version and I must say I'm very humbled about the whole thing. You can't help but feel that way about a song written and performed as well as this one is."
When Dan MacIntosh (Songfacts) spoke with Charles Fox in 2010, he refuted this story: "I think it's called an urban legend. It really didn't happen that way. Norman Gimbel and I wrote that song for a young artist whose name was Lori Lieberman. Norman had a book that he would put titles of songs, song ideas and lyrics or something that struck him at different times. And he pulled out the book and he was looking through it, and he says, 'Hey, what about a song title, 'Killing Me Softly With His Blues'?' Well, the 'killing me softly' part sounded very interesting, 'with his blues' sounded old fashioned in 1972 when we wrote it. So he thought for a while and he said, 'What about 'killing me softly with his song'? That has a unique twist to it.' So we discussed what it could be, and obviously it's about a song - listening to the song and being moved by the words. It's like the words are speaking to what that person's life is. Anyway, Norman went home and wrote an extraordinary lyric and called me later in the afternoon. I jotted it down over the phone. I sat down and the music just flowed right along with the words. And we got together the next morning and made a couple of adjustments with it and we played it for Lori, and she loved it, she said it reminds her of being at a Don McLean concert. So in her act, when she would appear, she would say that. And somehow the words got changed around so that we wrote it based on Don McLean, and even Don McLean I think has it on his Web site. But he doesn't know. You know, he only knows what the legend is."
According to Gimbel, he was introduced to the Argentinian-born composer Lalo Schifrin (then of Mission: Impossible fame) and began writing songs to a number of Schifrin's films. Both Gimbel and Schifrin made a suggestion to write a Broadway musical together, and Schifrin gave Gimbel an Argentinean novel—Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar—to read as a possible idea. The book was never made into a musical, but in chapter two, the narrator describes himself as sitting in a bar listening to an American pianist friend "kill us softly with some blues". Gimbel put the phrase in his "idea book" for use at a future time with parentheses around the word "blues" and substituted the word "song" instead.
In a contemporary article from April 5, 1973 in the New York Daily News, however, Norman Gimbel is quoted and seems to agree with Lieberman's account.[10] In the article, Lieberman is asked how the song came about and what its inspiration was.

“Don McLean,” she said simply. “I saw him at the Troubadour in LA last year. (“And there he was this young boy / A stranger to my eyes”) I had heard about him from some friends but up to then all I knew about him really was what others had told me. But I was moved by his performance, by the way he developed his numbers, he got right through to me. (“Strumming my pain with his fingers / Killing me softly with his song/ Telling my whole life with his words.”)

Lieberman was the first to record the song in late 1971, releasing it in early 1972. Helen Reddy has said she was sent the song, but "the demo... sat on my turntable for months without being played because I didn't like the title".
Roberta Flack first heard the song on an airplane, when the Lieberman original was featured on the in-flight audio program. After scanning the listing of available audio selections, Flack would recall: "The title, of course, smacked me in the face. I immediately pulled out some scratch paper, made musical staves [then] play[ed] the song at least eight to ten times jotting down the melody that I heard. When I landed, I immediately called Quincy [Jones] at his house and asked him how to meet Charles Fox. Two days later I had the music." Shortly afterwards Flack rehearsed the song with her band in the Tuff Gong Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, but did not then record it.
In September 1972, Flack was opening for Marvin Gaye at the Greek Theater; after performing her prepared encore song, Flack was advised by Gaye to sing an additional song. Flack later said, "I said well, I got this song I've been working on called 'Killing Me Softly...' and he said 'Do it, baby.' And I did it and the audience went crazy, and he walked over to me and put his arm around me and said, 'Baby, don't ever do that song again live until you record it.'"
Released in January 1973, Flack's version spent a total of five non-consecutive weeks at #1 in February and March, more weeks than any other record in 1973, being bumped to number 2 by The O'Jays' "Love Train" after four straight weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. Billboard ranked it as the No. 3 song for 1973. In April of 1973, Canadian singer Anne Murray included her version of "Killing Me Softly" on her album titled Danny's Song.
Charles Fox suggested that Flack's version was more successful than Lieberman's because Flack's "version was faster and she gave it a strong backbeat that wasn't in the original". According to Flack: "My classical background made it possible for me to try a number of things with [the song's arrangement]. I changed parts of the chord structure and chose to end on a major chord. [The song] wasn't written that way." Flack plays electric piano on the track. The bass is played by Ron Carter, the guitar by Hugh McCracken and the drums by Ray Lucas. The single appeared as the opening track of the album of the same name, issued in August 1973.
Flack won the 1973 Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, for the single, with Gimbel and Fox earning the Song of the Year Grammy.
In 1996 a house remix of Flack's version went to number one on the US dance chart.
In 1999 Flack's version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It ranked number 360 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and number 82 on Billboard's greatest songs of all time.


Lori Lieberman _ Killing me softly




 
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"Islands in the Stream" is a song written by the Bee Gees and sung by American country music artists Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. Named after the Ernest Hemingway novel, it was originally written for Marvin Gaye in an R&B style, only later to be changed for the Kenny Rogers album. It was released in August 1983 as the first single from Rogers' album Eyes That See in the Dark.
The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States, giving both Rogers and Parton their second pop number-one hit (after Rogers' "Lady" in 1980 and Parton's "9 to 5" in 1981). It also topped the Country and Adult Contemporary charts. It has been certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling over two million physical copies in the US. In 2005 the song topped CMT's poll of the best country duets of all time; Parton and Rogers reunited to perform the song on the CMT special.
Rogers and Parton went on to record a Christmas album together, and had an additional hit with their 1985 duet "Real Love".
Due to licensing reasons, this song wasn't included in digital release of Eyes That See in the Dark from Capitol Records Nashville.

Bee Gees - Islands In The Stream


 
"Mississippi" is a song by Dutch country pop band Pussycat. Written by Werner Theunissen and produced by Eddy Hilberts, "Mississippi" was the group's first number-one single in their home country, as well as their only number-one single in most countries worldwide. In New Zealand and South Africa, however, "Mississippi" was their first of two number-one singles; in the latter country, "Mississippi" was the best-selling single of 1977.
Werner Theunissen wrote "Mississippi" in 1969 being inspired by the Bee Gees song "Massachusetts". The song grabbed EMI Bovema's attention, and they decided to sign the band. By December 1975, the song had topped the Dutch Singles Chart. Its international success came in 1976, when it reached number one in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, as well as number two in Australia, number four in Austria, and number six in Sweden. In South Africa, "Mississippi" was the highest-selling single of 1977. It is estimated to have sold five million copies worldwide. Outside the Netherlands, Pussycat would later achieve more number-one singles in New Zealand and South Africa, but in most territories, "Mississippi" was their highest-charting effort.
In the UK, the song was promoted by John Saunders Hughes through a Liverpool radio station. The lyrics are about the history of music, and how rock music became more popular than country music.

Pussycat - Mississippi
 
"Let Your Love Flow" is a pop song written by Larry E. Williams which was recorded in the autumn of 1975 by country music duo the Bellamy Brothers for whom it afforded an international hit in 1976.
Bellamy Brothers - Let Your Love Flow
 
"Sailing" is a song composed by Gavin Sutherland of the Sutherland Brothers in 1972, best known as a 1975 international hit for Rod Stewart.
Gavin Sutherland would comment: "Most people take the song to be about a young guy telling his girl that he's crossing the Atlantic to be with her. In fact the song's got nothing to do with romance or ships; it's an account of mankind's spiritual odyssey through life on his way to freedom and fulfillment with the Supreme Being."
Written on the beach by Blythe Bridge, "Sailing" was recorded by the Sutherland Brothers – a duo consisting of Gavin and Iain Sutherland – in a June 1972 session: the brothers provided their own backing with Gavin on bass drum and Iain on harmonium – (Iain Sutherland quote:) "The original idea was it should have a Celtic feel to it" – and overdubbed their vocals. Issued as a single, the Sutherland Brothers' "Sailing" almost reached the official UK singles chart (then formatted as a Top 50), as "Sailing" peaked at #54 in July 1972, and the single's sales were reportedly 40,000 units. The Sutherland Brothers had recorded "Sailing" subsequent to completing the tracks intended for their upcoming album release Lifeboat, and that album was issued in November 1972 without the inclusion of "Sailing": included on the US edition of the Lifeboat album, "Sailing" by the Sutherland Brothers would make its UK album debut on the 1976 Sutherland Brothers' compilation album entitled Sailing
"Sailing" was recorded by Rod Stewart for his first album recorded in North America rather than Great Britain: Atlantic Crossing, which album was recorded April – June 1975 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio with Tom Dowd producing. The first single from the album, "Sailing" afforded Stewart an international hit notably in the UK where "Sailing" was #1 for four weeks in September 1975: augmented by a return to the UK chart in 1976 and – to a lesser extent – 1987, "Sailing" remains the Rod Stewart single to have the greatest success in its UK release. However "Sailing" failed to afford Stewart a major hit in his newly adopted US homeland.

Sutherland Brothers Band -Sailing


 
"What About Love" is a song originally recorded by Canadian rock group Toronto but is best known for the 1985 release by the rock group Heart. The song was Heart's "comeback" single. It was the first Heart track to reach the top 40 in three years, and their first top 10 hit in five. It was released as the first single from the band's self-titled 1985 album, Heart, as well as their first hit single on their new record label, Capitol Records. Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas, co-lead vocalists of Starship at the time, provide additional background vocals on the song.
The song was originally recorded in 1983 by Canadian rock group Toronto, of which songwriters Sheron Alton and Brian Allen were members. (The other songwriter, Jim Vallance, was not a member of Toronto, though he played drums on Toronto's recording of the song.) However, the rest of the band elected not to release the song, and the frustration Allen and Alton faced in being unable to convince their bandmates to feature this and other material on Toronto's albums led to their departure from the group.
Later, Michael McCarty at ATV Music Publishing was reviewing his song catalogue when he came across "What About Love". He offered the song to Heart, who turned it into a worldwide hit. Toronto's original version remained commercially unreleased until 2002, when it appeared as a bonus cut on the CD's 'Get It On Credit' and Toronto: The Greatest Hits.
The song's sound marked a considerable change in the musical direction for Heart, moving from the hard rock and folk rock of their earlier work to a more polished, power ballad sound. "What About Love" received extensive airplay on MTV and returned Heart to the Top-10 of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in five years, peaking at #10.
The song peaked at #14 on the UK Singles Chart upon its re-release in 1988. Exclusively in its UK release, "What About Love" was also featured in an extended version on 12" and CD single versions.
The song's chorus was featured in a series of Swiffer WetJet TV commercials from late 2010 into the following year. The campaign followed a series of previous Swiffer commercials using popular songs of the '70s and '80s.

What About Love -Tornoto


 
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