For reasons I have not yet come to know, the whole day I've had Steve Perry's 1984 hit "Oh Sherrie" in my head. As a result, that shall be this week's Retro Video of the Week. That is all.
Saturday will mark the 25th anniversary of the release of industrial metal rockers Powerman 5000's second studio album, Tonight the Stars Revolt! While I am excited to discuss the album, there is an exclamation mark at the end of the album title. I was today years old when I learned that the lead singer of Powerman 5000, Spider One, is Rob Zombie's younger brother. With the band's sound and its lyrics often relating to science fiction, monsters, and the like, I suppose it's not too much of a surprise.
Anywho, Tonight the Star Revolt! was a pretty big success, reaching #29 on the Billboard album chart and eventually going platinum in the U.S., making it the band's best-selling album. The Powerman 5000 song I remember the most is "When Worlds Collide," a ball-busting industrial/nu metal song that reached #16 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and #18 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song is apparently about social classes and their collision, and the verses are kind of spoken-word and relatively subdued, but the choruses are all-out mayhem. The video is set in some steampunk, post-apocalyptic factory, run by Satan (or a man who really wants to be Satan). Worlds collide when Spider One and Satan face off. Who will come out victorious? You'll have to watch to find out.
This past Sunday was the 35th anniversary of the release of Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds's second studio album, Tender Lover. Like his debut album, 1986's Lovers, Tender Lover was co-produced by LA Reid, with uncredited production help from Babyface's childhood friend Daryl Simmons. Some combination of those three, as well as Perri Reid -- better known as Pebbles, who had a successful music career in her own right -- wrote all the songs for the album.
Tender Lovers ended up being one of the most successful R&B albums released in 1989. It reached #14 on the Billboard album chart and #1 on the Billboard R&B album chart, and its success carried through into the next year, as it was the #21 album on the Billboard Year End album chart for 1990 and the #2 album on the Billboard Year End R&B album chart for 1990. Eventually, it went triple platinum in the U.S.
The album featured four Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including two Top 10 songs: "It's No Crime" (#7), the title track (#14), "My Kinda Girl" (#30), and "Whip Appeal" (#6). Those songs all reached the Top 3 of the Billboard R&B singles chart, hitting #1, #1, #3, and #2, respectively.
Reid and Babyface would also form LaFace Records in 1989, and they and Simmons would continue to write and produce music together for the decades that followed, mostly for other artists, like Boyz II Men, Whitney Houston, TLC, Toni Braxton, Pink, Bobby Brown, Bell Biv DeVoe, Dru Hill, and Tevin Campbell, among many others.
For this week's Retro Video of the Week, I'm going with the first single off of Tender Lovers, "It's No Crime," a shining example of the new jack swing genre that was all the rage back then. Now get out there and get your free Slurpee before the day is over.
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