Yep, you read it right. Episode 2 of the Jheri Curl Chronicles podcast is up for your listening pleasure! In case you missed it, you can check out Episode 1 here.
In this series, me and Thomas Inskeep talk about every song to hit #1 on Billboard’s Hot Soul Singles (later named Hot Black Singles) chart in the 1980s. We’re going five at a time, and we’ve got a nice meaty section of 1980 to tackle in this episode.
The 5 songs we discuss this time around are:
“Don’t Say Goodnight (It’s Time For Love)” by The Isley Brothers
“Let’s Get Serious” by Jermaine Jackson
“Take Your Time (Do It Right)” by The S.O.S. Band
“One In A Million You” by Larry Graham
“Upside Down” by Diana Ross
More specifically, we talk about:
-How The Isleys’ Go All The Way album (which featured “Don’t Say Goodnight”) was originally supposed to be the first Isley-Jasper-Isley album, and which steamy bedroom classic from 1979 inspired the Isleys as they wrote “Goodnight”.
-Stevie Wonder’s influence on “Let’s Get Serious”, and the trajectory of Jermaine’s career through the mid ’80s, which included Devo, Iman, and an assist from his little brother.
-The absolute jammin’-ness of The S.O.S. Band’s Jam & Lewis-produced output. We scratch our heads in collective wonderment at the fact that masterpieces like “Just Be Good To Me” and “The Finest” stopped (just) short of pole position. We also wax rhapsodic over “Tell Me If You Still Care”, which has gone on to a long life courtesy of artists like Mariah Carey and Monica.
-One of us finds Sly & The Family Stone (the band that spawned Larry Graham) overrated. One of us (actually, both of us) also think that Larry Graham ruined Prince.
-Did you know that Diana’s “Upside Down” was (allegedly) originally written for Aretha Franklin? Have you read Nile Rodgers’ excellent book? We also give a shout out to Diana’s camp-tastic video clips for “Muscles” and “Swept Away”.
Have a listen in the player below. You can also stream the podcast on Liberated Syndication, directly download the podcast to your computer, or subscribe to us on iTunes. (note: the shows generally take a day or so to feed to iTunes.)
Oh, also we should give props to our intro and outro songs for this episode: Patrice Rushen’s “Haven’t You Heard” and Chaka Khan’s “Papillon (Hot Butterfly)”, two classics from 1980 that didn’t make it to the top of the charts, but are always at the top of our hearts.