Saturday, February 19, 2022

Music History Today: February 20, 2022

February 20, 1988: "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" by Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield made it to Number 2 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart.

"What Have I Done to Deserve This?," Pet Shop Boys' first major collaboration with another recording artist, was and demoed around Christmas 1984 with the assistance of notable American songwriter Allee Willis. 

Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield
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Originally intended for use on their LP Please, the problem was to decide who’d sing the other half of the duet. Various contemporary singers were suggested to them, but none of them seemed suitable for the song. Eventually their manager’s assistant suggested Dusty Springfield. 
Read more: Wikipedia

February 20, 1965: "I Go to Pieces" was a Top 10 hit, peaking at Number 9, for Peter & Gordon.

Peter & Gordon parlayed lovely harmony singing and some Lennon/McCartney songs into stardom during the British Invasion in the early to mid-60s.

Peter & Gordon
Peter & Gordon

Yet it was a song written by another 60s icon, Del Shannon, that led to perhaps the duo’s most iconic track: ”I Go To Pieces,” a Top 10 hit in 1965 and one of music’s all-time great weepers. 
Read more: American Songwriter

February 20, 1971: Gordon Lightfoot made it to Number 5 in the US with "If You Could Read My Mind."

Gordon Lightfoot has cited his divorce for inspiring the lyrics to "If You Could Read My Mind" saying they came to him as he was sitting in a vacant Toronto house one summer. At the request of his daughter Ingrid, he performs the lyrics with a slight change now: The line "I'm just trying to understand the feelings that you lack" is altered to "I'm just trying to understand the feelings that we lack." 
Read more: Wikipedia

February 20, 1982: Stevie Nicks entered the US chart with "Edge of Seventeen (Just Like the White Winged Dove)."

"Edge of Seventeen" wasn't the first or highest-charting single from Stevie Nicks' debut solo record Bella Donna.

Stevie Nicks
Stevie Nicks
 

It was preceded by "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," a melodramatic collaboration with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Leather and Lace, a more delicate duet with the Eagles' Don Henley. But more than any other Stevie Nicks solo moment, Edge of Seventeen has entranced subsequent generations and helped to define the singer's standing as a rock icon. 

Read more: BBC Culture

February 20, 1993: Duran Duran topped out at Number 3 on the American music chart with "Ordinary World."

Duran Duran’s 1993 single “Ordinary World” is an homage to loved ones who have died.

Duran Duran 1993 album  "Ordinary World"

 The song serves as a remembrance of foregone times, and details the occasional yearning for those times that everyone experiences when dealing with the death of a loved one. 

Read more: Seven Ponds

What Have I Done to Deserve This?
Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield

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