Category Archives: throwback weekends

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Song of the Day #5,950: ‘This Ole House’ – Rosemary Clooney

After writing about one too many lazy R&B jams, I’ve made the executive decision to narrow Throwback Weekends to the 50s through the 80s. I’m always excited to discover which songs were popular in those four decades, and seldom excited to relive the hits of the 90s and 00s, so why not make it official?

Part of the appeal of the earlier decades is that they all predate my adulthood. I was either a teenager, a kid, or not yet born when those songs came out. That makes for a more entertaining throwback than revisiting the hits of my 20s and 30s. Plus, popular music in the 90s and 00s frequently sucked.

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Song of the Day #5,944: ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ – Stevie Wonder

I’ve mentioned the song that topped Billboard’s Hot 100 the week of October 13, 1984, three times before on the blog, but this is its first appearance as a song of the day.

Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You,’ the lead single from the film The Woman in Red, is famous — in my book — for winning the Best Song Oscar over much superior competition. This treacly love song beat out Deniece Williams’ ‘Let’s Hear it for the Boy’ and Kenny Loggins’ ‘Footloose‘ as well as Phil Collins’ ‘Against All Odds’ and Ray Parker Jr.’s ‘Ghostbusters.’

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Song of the Day #5,943: ‘Then Came You’ – Dionne Warwick & The Spinners

Throwing back to the week of Oct. 12, 1974, we find Billy Preston atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Nothing from Nothing,’ one of his three #1 hits, and one I’ve already featured on the blog.

At #2 that week was a collaboration between Dionne Warwick and The Spinners — ‘Then Came You’ — that eventually gave both artists their first chart-topping hit.

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Song of the Day #5,937: ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ – Roy Orbison and The Candy Men

In the first week of October, 1964, Roy Orbison had his second (and final) #1 hit with the song most associated with him: ‘Oh, Pretty Woman.’

This was long before Van Halen has a Top 20 hit with the track in 1982, and even longer before Julia Roberts became a household name starring in a movie of the same name in 1990.

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Song of the Day #5,936: ‘I Need You Now’ – Eddie Fisher

Throwing back to the week of October 2, 1954, we have two repeats atop the Billboard chart in Rosemary Clooney’s ‘Hey There’ and the Crew Cuts’ ‘Sh-Boom.‘ Those two songs dominated the summer and fall of 1954, with one or the other sitting at #1 for 13 straight weeks.

Right behind them on this week was Eddie Fisher with ‘I Need You Now,’ a song that would eventually make it to #1 for three weeks that November. This was Fisher’s fourth #1 in two years and his second in 1954 (following ‘Oh! My Pa-Pa’).

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