It's Monday, time for a new #1 R&B single: Save Your Love (For #1) - Rene & Angela Week ending July 20, 1985 2 wks This is the first time i'm hearing this. I don't care for it. Remember what I said about the merging of rap and R&B?
Sounds like the subtitle was added on because of another "Save Your Love" that was a UK #1 in late 1982/early 1983 for a similar-sounding act, Renee & Renato (Americans may be familiar with it only due to a mail-order record offer ad that aired not long after). But whilst I was familiar with the Loose Ends song (if not the group's name), I'm not so much this, so I'm in the same boat as you. This detail is important because the Rene & Angela record somehow got to #66 on the UK Gallup charts in this year.
And here in comparison is the Renee & Renato record, to see why Rene & Angela's song had to have its subtitle:
It's a shopping mall food court Grandmaster Flash meets a dollar store Tina Turner. Really '80s annoying.
People, this is the last song of relatively unknown mundane songs for a while before we return to stuff more of you know and remember.
It seems no one gives a crap about this song (me included), so to hopefully liven things up, i'm going to post the next #1 R&B single. Next: Freeway Of Love - Aretha Franklin Week ending August 3, 1985 5 weeks! Produced by Narada Michael Walden.
Now that's more like it! I wasn't all that familiar with any of 'Retha's '70s hits, but I was a huge fan of her Atlantic classics from the '60s, so for me it was like she'd been gone for close to two decades. "Freeway" isn't quite in the same class as "Chain Of Fools" but it's a great pop/R&B tune, immense fun, and Franklin sings the heck out of it. This brought Aretha back - at least briefly - to the very center of the pop universe, and remains one of the best big hits of '85. Welcome back, Queen!
As I have said in earlier posts on this thread and the other Billboard thread, she never left! And, if you aren't familiar with her 70s singles, you really owe it to yourself to check them out. She had a few big ones, especially the Stevie Wonder-penned "Until You Come Back To Me (That's What I'm Going To Do)".
Stevie's "Until You Come Back To Me" is the only Aretha '70s single I was really aware of as a kid. Well, that and "Rock Steady", barely. My uncle wasn't a huge Aretha fan, tho he had a few singles. Dionne and Diana were his jams. And Tina - especially Tina. I wish he'd been into Nina Simone, because damn.
I noticed on this that her voice sounded a bit raspier than in her late '60's-mid-'70's heyday. It is also ironic that she was on Arista at this point along with Dionne Warwick, given that both had done way different castings of "I Say A Little Prayer" (Ms. Warwick first, of course, followed by Ms. Franklin taking it to "the church" as her former Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler would have so famously put it). Did anyone who saw the video notice that the pitch of the song was goosed up by about 4%? And finally, as we're seeing now with a whole batch of acts that first stoke their claims in the '60's (I presume "stoke" is the past-tense of "stake"), the only songs of theirs now played by oldies stations are those of the '80's. Thus a person listening to, say, 'CBS-FM in New York, would come away with the impression that "Freeway Of Love" was her only big hit. And this is practically the only one of hers they ever play anymore (unless they also play a future hit of hers which saw her duet with a big '80's artist).
Which is strange because her voice on her 1980 Arista debut album sounds fantastic. But, she blamed her raspy voice on her smoking, which she gave up in time for her next album. The two had a feud going all the way back to that song. Allegedly, Dionne Warwick was steamed that Aretha had the bigger hit. You'd think that at some point these two superstars would have collaborated on something at some point, but they never did. As I recall, Dionne made some comments about their long-standing feud after Aretha Franklin passed. Someone correct me if I got this wrong. That could have been a lot of things. If my DAC was working, I would pull out my 45, do a needledrop, and compare it with the album version. The YouTube reacters have been doing 60s pop/rock tunes, and one has done "Chain Of Fools" already, so maybe they will start to do some 60s and 70s soul as the whole classic rock thing has gotten very old.
It did seem Ms. Warwick had quite a few chips on her shoulder, not just viz Ms. Franklin. I seem to remember her steaming when Cilla Black had a bigger hit than she with "Anyone Who Had A Heart" in the UK.
Yeah, something tells me something happened over that 5-year period viz her voice - and 'ciggies' as I've read about her were a factor.
Dionne Warwick has had a long reputation for having a bad temper and a potty mouth. Family roots run deep because Whitney Houston was the same way. Aretha Franklin didn't have a attitude per se, but she always made it clear that no one should mess with her. I suppose her (alleged) abusive ex-husband Ted White had a lot to do with that.
I looked back a page, and couldn't say for sure that I'd heard any of the ones before Aretha. But boy, did I hear that one--still love it to this day. JcS
I knew someone who had to work on a charity event with her around the turn of the century. He did not have great feedback. Which made me a little sad. The whole family sounds like something of a trainwreck, unfortunately...
