Throwing back to the week of April 23, 1994, we have repeats in the #1 and #2 spot with R. Kelly’s ‘Bump N’ Grind’ and Ace of Base’s ‘The Sign,’ respectively.
In the third spot that week was 90s hitmaker Mariah Carey with her cover of Badfinger’s ‘Without You.’ The original didn’t make much of a commercial splash but it did spawn two hit versions.
Forty years ago today, Phil Collins’ power ballad ‘Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)’ reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first of three weeks. The song was written for the Taylor Hackford film Against All Odds, and is probably the most memorable thing about it.
Collins was nominated for the Best Song Oscar for this song, the first of three career nominations. He would eventually win for his work on 2000’s animated Tarzan, but he lost this one to Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You.’
Throwing back to the week of April 20, 1974, the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 was ‘TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia),’ a disco instrumental by soul band MFSB, a Philly-based group comprised of more than 30 musicians. Vocal group The Three Degrees show up to deliver the song’s only words, the repeated phrase “Let’s get it on, it’s time to get down.”
This track was written as the theme song for Soul Train, and became the first TV theme to ever reach #1. Four more repeated the feat, and rather than give those away here I’ve made a note to do a week on them after I finish with Cowboy Carter.
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.
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.
