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.
I know Badfinger’s most famous song, 1970’s ‘Without You,’ pretty well, though probably not through their original version. Harry Nilsson’s version reached #1 for a month in early 1972, and Mariah Carey had an international hit with the song in 1994, a week after Nilsson’s death.
The original version, featured today, has a definite late-60s Beatles vibe, appropriate because Badfinger was the first band signed to The Beatles’ Apple label and the band recorded songs written by Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Apparently Nilsson thought this was a Beatles track when he first heard it.
The album that many Bowie fans pinpoint as David Bowie’s first big miss, a soulless exercise in commercialism, also happens to be the biggest success of his career.
1983’s Let’s Dance was indeed crafted with a broader audience in mind. Bowie described it as “a refocusing of Young Americans” and the singles do share the catchy exuberance of that album’s title track.
Meet Me In Montauk 