HOF Inductee No. 7: "I Feel For You," Chaka Khan

 And with this, Prince is now in the Earworm Hall of Fame, but only as a songwriter. Performing this song from Prince's self-title second album was ... Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chaka Khan. Chaka Khan. Chaka Khan. Chaka Khan.

And that's the hook that got stuck in a million or more ear canals: the repeated name of a singer. Chaka Khan was prominent from her time with the funk group Rufus. But her career was in a bit of decline by 1984. It was at this point that super-producer Arif Mardin combined the disparate elements of a Prince song, Chaka Khan's powerful, emotive vocals, a Stevie Wonder harmonica and crowd noise sample, with that key ingredient part that turns an energetic Prince cover into an earworm legend:  a hip-hop hook courtesy of Melle Mel (from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, whose career as rap pioneers also was in decline by 1984). And he only is simply repeating the singer's stage name.

Prince's second LP was his breakthrough to pop audiences. "I Feel For You" was just an album track, buried near the end of side two. "I Wanna Be Your Lover" was Prince's first hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #11 on January 26, 1980. "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" was probably the best song on the LP, but it was a hit only on the R&B charts. I failed to cross over to the pop (i.e., "white") audience. And the hard rocking "Bambi" showed Prince could do a credible job with rock and roll if he chose to go in that direction (which he later did, quite often and quite successfully, on so many tracks over the years). (Footnote: For years I have dreamed of Guns & Roses covering "Bambi." It would be well within their wheelhouse, sonically and thematically.)

And then Prince's "I Feel For You" landed on Yvette Marie Stevens's vocal chords. Chaka Khan was a 1970s funk superstar who was still putting out records in the 1980s. "I Feel For You" was the title track from Ms. Stevens's sixth solo LP. But nothing much had landed with mainstream audiences from her solo career except for the Ashford & Simpson penned anthem from her solo debut Chaka, "I'm Every Woman." And, as great as was that song, it climbed only to #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in very late 1978. She had a great career as lead singer for Rufus, but her solo career was completely stalled out.

Then Melle Mel said her name in a way only he could have done: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch Chaka Khan Chaka Khan Chaka Khan Chaka Khan. And the rest is earworm history.

HOF Inductee No. 6: "Please Mister Please," Olivia Newton-John

Sad news today, Monday, August 8, 2022, of the death of Olivia Newton-John after her 30 year (!) struggle with breast cancer. So, in her honor on this day, we have but on request.

Don't play B-17.

Ms. Newton-John was the grand-daughter of Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Born. You may know Mr. Born for his work in the field of quantum mechanics. Her father was the British M15 officer who arrest the notorious Nazi Rudolf Hess. She spent 10 weeks on top the Billboard pop charts with the kitschy fun "Physical". No. That was not meant to denigrate Ms. Newton-John. Very few singers have ever spent 10 weeks at number in total in their careers, let alone with just a single single that perfectly captured the zeitgeist of 1981.

So many wonderful earworms that Ms. Newton-John injected into our brains over the year. But the most earwormy of all her earworms was not one of her biggest hits. This one made it "only" to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was #1 on multiple charts in Canada, but the only chart it managed to reach #1 in the U.S. was adult contemporary, then labeled, unfortunately, "easy listening."

Smart. Beautiful. Bubbly personality. She didn't seem full of herself (and if she was, well, she kept it extremely well-hidden for those of us in the general public). And yet she lived almost half her life (30 out of 73 years) under the death sentence of breast cancer.

So enjoy the fun music she gave us over many years. From her version of Bob Dylan's "If Not For You", memorably done before her by George Harrison on this "All Things Must Pass" solo debut, in 1971, until her last Top 10 hit in 1983, with "Twist of Fate" -- yes she did have two more Top 40 hits after that last one, but her last Top 40 hit was the awful "Soul Kiss" in 1985 -- so many great songs from such a beautiful woman. But, whatever you do, however you want to remember her, do not play B-17.

You can, however, enjoy some good Kentucky whiskey in her honor.

HOF Inductee No. 5: "Free Bird," Lynyrd Skynyrd

 

Once upon a time, there was a radio format known as "AOR." AOR stood for "Album Oriented Rock." AOR stations did not play the Top 40 hits (although sometimes some of the songs did crack the Top 40 charts, usually in the bottom quarter or so). They played the album cuts, sometimes album cuts sufficiently obscure as to be "deep cuts." AOR was very popular in the late 1960s and, especially, the first half of the 1970s. AOR radio was so popular that some of the songs routinely played on the AOR stations became more popular than various band's hit singles.

The "Mt. Rushmore" of AOR radio was the Big Four of "Stairway to Heaven" (Led Zeppelin), "Layla" (Derek and the Dominos, a.k.a. Eric Clapton in his Allman Brothers derivative phase), "Roundabout" (Yes) and the great "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. These songs were memorable, more hook-a-licious than what was playing on the Top 40 stations, and were so long in length that the D.J. could take a bathroom break, or a smoke break, and not worry about the song coming to an end before the break was over.

AOR radio later became classic rock. Radio stations were not longer driven the taste preferences of local DJ's, but were all programmed, across the country, out of the same office located in a strip mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bland corporate rock was in, causing the revolution of punk and new wave, which, too, succumbed to corporatization during the MTV era.

Speaking of bland, this is a song that you should only listen to as the live version. The studio version is OK, but it's not real deal. But it was the bigger hit. Studio peaked at #19 in 1974, while the iconic live version barely scraped into the Top 40 at #38 in 1976.

But through it all, one AOR rock earworm triumphed over all of the trends that came and went. Not even death could diminish the power and catchiness of the greatest anthem the genre of southern rock ever produced: the majesty of "Free Bird."

And this bird you cannot change.