Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Ankles/Hands/Feet/Fingers/Toes/Wrists.”

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Using this week’s prompt in the group name instead of the lyrics this week, and posting a song I know very little about other than I like it!

I first heard One Thing in late 2003 when my son and his friends were listening to music and I fell in love with the slow, easy rock ballad about taking chances and risking it all… or missing out.

I listened to other songs on the CD and didn’t connect with any the way I did with One Thing, but it has been with me from mp3 players to iPods to Pandora, Amazon Music and Spotify.

Sang by Canadian rock band Finger Eleven, One Thing was released in September 2003 as the second single from their self-titled album. The song hit number five on Modern Rock Tracks and stayed on the chart for twenty-six weeks, and number two on the Adult Top 40 chart.

FUN FACTS

• • Finger Eleven first formed at Lester B. Pearson High School in Burlington, Ontario as “Rainbow Butt Monkeys.”
  • The group got signed by Coalition Entertainment in 1996, and changed their name to “Finger Eleven” in March, 1997. The name Finger Eleven came from a demo of their song “Thin Spirits”.
  • One Thing enjoyed exposure on TV series such as Smallville, Scrubs, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Third Watch.
  • The song was used on WWE’s June 25, 2007, edition of RAW during a tribute video featuring Chris Benoit, who had been found dead along with his wife and son at their home shortly before the show started (unbeknownst to WWE, Benoit had murdered his wife and son, then killed himself).
  • The song won the 2004 MuchMusic Video Award for Best Video. The music video features black-and-white footage of the band in a surreal nocturnal environment featuring a beach with a checkered pattern shore.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Come/Go/Leave/Stay.”

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Don’t park the Wayback Machine yet, 1973 is calling!

American singer-songwriter Linda Laurie wrote and released Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress) in early June of 1973 with little success. At the same time, the song was shopped to Australian Helen Reddy, considered by some to be the pop diva of the 70s. She added a cover of the song to her Long Hard Climb album released in August of the same year.

Leave Me Alone was released in October as a single and became a million-selling, Gold-certified hit single and was also the second of Reddy’s six consecutive No. 1 songs on the Billboard Easy Listening Chart.

FUN FACTS

• • Capitol Records issued Leave Me Alone as the follow-up single to Reddy’s No. 1 hit Delta Dawn despite the misgivings of Reddy herself who felt Leave Me Alone was a thematic retread of Delta Dawn as both songs concern a Southern woman – alliteratively named – whose reason has been undermined by an ill-fated tryst.
  •  Capitol Records was correct in believing the resemblance to Reddy’s precedent hit would work in Leave Me Alone’s favor as the song reached the American Top Ten chart six weeks after its single release, making Long Hard Climb the only one of Reddy’s albums to feature two Top Ten songs.
  • Reddy found the song’s chorus with its repetition of the phrase “leave me alone” monotonous. It’s repeated 43 times.
  • During Helen’s retirement from performing, she earned a degree in clinical hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistic programming. She was a practising clinical hypnotherapist and Patron of the Australian Society of Clinical Hypnotherapists.
  • When Reddy came out of retirement in 2013, playing US club dates with an act focused on songs she’d recorded which were not released as singles, she cited Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress) as “one song I will never ever sing again” disparaging its lyrical repetitiveness: “that sort of songwriting doesn’t do much for me, but it was a hit. However, I don’t have to sing it anymore if I don’t want to, and I don’t want to.”
  • In August 2015, unnamed sources revealed that Reddy was diagnosed with dementia and had moved into the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Samuel Goldwyn Center where she is cared for by family and friends.

The music video is notable not just for being a ‘live’ performance, but also for taking place on The Johnny Carson Show.

Knowing the back story of Reddy’s disdain for the song explains her near-bored look during the performance in comparison to other songs like Delta Dawn and Angie Baby.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “I/Me/Them/Us/You/We.”

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The first song I thought of for this week’s prompt was We Are Family by Sister Sledge. Having five sisters (two older, three younger), it’s been our sibling theme song since its release in 1979.

But then, I realized my second favorite We song had just passed a milestone too. We Are the World, a charity single originally recorded by the supergroup, USA for Africa, turned thirty-five last month.

Following Band Aid’s 1984 Do They Know It’s Christmas? project in the UK, an idea for the creation of an American benefit single for African famine relief came from activist Harry Belafonte, who, along with fundraiser Ken Kragen, was instrumental in bringing the vision to reality. Several musicians were contacted by the pair, before Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie were assigned the task of writing the song. The duo completed the writing of We Are the World seven weeks after the release of Do They Know It’s Christmas?, and one night before the song’s first recording session, on January 21, 1985. The historic event brought together some of the most famous artists in the music industry at the time.

The song was released on March 7, 1985, as the first single from the album. A worldwide commercial success, topping music charts throughout the world and becoming the fastest-selling American pop single in history. The first ever single to be certified multi-platinum, We Are the World received a Quadruple Platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America.

In all, more than 45 of America’s top musicians participated in the recording, and another 50 had to be turned away. Upon entering the recording studio, the musicians were greeted by a sign pinned to the door which read, “Please check your egos at the door.” They were also greeted by Stevie Wonder, who proclaimed that if the recording was not completed in one take, he and Ray Charles, two blind men, would drive everybody home.

FUN FACTS

• • Awarded numerous honors—including three Grammy Awards, one American Music Award, and a People’s Choice Award—the song was promoted with a critically received music video, a home video, a special edition magazine, a simulcast, and several books, posters, and shirts. The promotion and merchandise aided the success of We Are the World and raised over $63 million (equivalent to $147 million today) for humanitarian aid in Africa and the US.
  •  The song became the first single since The Beatles’ Let It Be to enter Billboard‘s Top 5 within two weeks of release.
  • Outside of the US, the single reached number one in Australia, France, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The song peaked at number 2 in only two countries: Germany and Austria.
  • Elias Kifle Maraim Beyene, a survivor from Ethiopia being asked about his memory of Michael Jackson after his death remembers:
    

    I won’t ever forget Michael Jackson because his contribution to the song We are the World had a very significant effect on my life. I am 50 now but 25 years ago I was living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which at that time was suffering from a long drought and famine. It was a terrible situation. Lots of people became sick and many more died. Around one million people in all were killed by the famine. In 1984 Michael Jackson, along with a number of other leading musicians, made the song We are the World to raise money for Africa. We received a lot of aid from the world and I was one of those who directly benefited from it. The wheat flour that was distributed to the famine victims was different to the usual cereal we bought at the market. We baked a special bread from it. The local people named the bread after the great artist and it became known as Michael Bread.

USA for Africa participants:

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.

Song Lyric Sunday was created by Helen Vahdati from This Thing Called Life One Word at a Time and author Jim Adams from A Unique Title For Me is our current guest host. For complete rules or to join in the fun, click here.

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this week is “Babe/Cutie/Doll/Honey/Sweetie.”

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The driving beat and horn section in the beginning of this song tells you 1) it’s 80s music and, 2) it’s time to dance!

Detroit funk band, One Way, had only enjoyed modest success until the second release from their 1982 album, Who’s Foolin’ Who, Cutie Pie. A dance club favorite, the song soared to #4 on the US Billboard R&B Singles chart and #29 on the US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play Singles chart. It peaked at #61 on the pop chart and would be the band’s only appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, leaving One Way to join the list of one-hit wonders.

FUN FACTS

• • Though One Way disbanded and reformed several times over the years without another hit song, in 2019, after a 31-year hiatus and now called One Way featuring Al Hudson, they  released their 12th album, New Old School.
  • Lead vocalist, Alicia Myers, left One Way before the release of their second album and went on to a moderately successful solo R&B career in the early 1980s.
  • Alicia’s older brother, Jackie Myers, also a musician, would later become part of the beach band, Chairman of the Board.
  •  Alicia is a survivor of childhood tuberculosis. She later survived breast cancer in 1998 and has since become an advocate for the disease.

Enjoy!

See my Song Lyric Sunday selection for Nesie’s Place!

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Disclaimer: I have no copyrights to the song and/or video and/or hyperlinks to songs and/or videos and/or gifs above. No copyright infringement intended.