Category Archives: throwback weekends

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Song of the Day #5,762: ‘Suspicion’ – Terry Stafford

It’s fun to throw back to the first few months of 1964 and see the full force of Beatlemania. The week of April 11 that year, for example, found ‘Can’t Buy Me Love‘ and ‘Twist and Shout‘ in the #1 and #2 spots, respectively. ‘She Loves You,’ ‘Please Please Me,’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ also appeared in the top ten.

A week earlier, the Fab Four occupied every one of the top five slots, so kudos to the man who broke that stranglehold this week by making it to #3. That was singer-songwriter Terry Stafford, whose recording of ‘Suspicion’ gave him the biggest hit of his career.

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Song of the Day #5,761: ‘Wanted’ – Perry Como

Throwing back to the week of April 10, 1954, we find Perry Como atop the Billboard singles chart with ‘Wanted,’ a song that would spend two months in the #1 spot and become the best-selling track of that year.

‘Wanted’ was the eighth of 11 #1 hits for Como between 1945 and 1958, and he had 36 other top ten releases during that span. I guess he was his era’s Drake.

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Song of the Day #5,755: ‘Tipsy’ – J-Kwon

Throwing back to the week of April 3, 2004, we find Usher’s ‘Yeah!’ in the middle of its 12-week run at #1. In the second spot is another repeat, Chingy’s ‘One Call Away.‘

That brings us to #3, where 17-year-old rapper J-Kwon’s ‘Tipsy,’ an ode to underage drinking, casual sex, and misogyny camped out on its way to an eventual peak at #2. This was J-Kwon’s first and only hit, with follow-up single ‘You & Me’ topping out at #58.

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Song of the Day #5,754: ‘Bump N’ Grind’ – R. Kelly

I’ve gone 5,753 songs of the day and nearly 16 years without featuring an R. Kelly song, but that streak ends today. Long before the R&B singer was convicted of child sexual abuse, racketeering, and sex trafficking, he had a #2 hit the week of April 2, 1994.

‘Bump N’ Grind,’ in hindsight, reads a bit like a confession. “My mind is telling me no, but my body’s telling me yes,” he says in the song’s intro. “Baby, I don’t want to hurt nobody.”

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Song of the Day #5,748: ‘Footloose’ – Kenny Loggins

Footloose (1984) is one of the great soundtrack movies, a kind of film we were treated to far more often in the 80s. Think Top Gun, Flashdance, Dirty Dancing, and any number of John Hughes movies.

Six of this soundtrack’s nine songs reached Billboard’s Top 40, and three reached the top ten. Of those, two made it to #1 — Deniece Williams’ ‘Let’s Hear it for the Boy‘ and the title track by Kenny Loggins, today’s featured Throwback Weekend song.

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