I exercised for the first time in two years last week -- I don't recommend it -- and found myself frantically searching for appropriate music for 20 minutes on the ole elliptical machine. As I am want to do, I panicked and selected Bananarama: the perfect "Now or Never" EP on Tuesday and then the (underappreciated by me) "Viva" album on Friday. It was when track 2 -- "Love Don't Live Here," with "anymore" thrown in the chorus -- came on that I thought it would be fun to do a week of similarly named songs, starting with this one. Instead of Madonna -- which is where most gays of a certain age learned the other song with that title -- I give you the original version, recorded by Rose Royce in 1978.
The American soul group -- known for hits like "Car Wash," "I Wanna Get Next to You," "I'm Going Down" and "Wishing on a Star" -- took "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" to No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 5 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 2 on the singles chart in the U.K., where they achieved their greatest success overall.
Bananrama's single only reached No. 114 on the U.K. singles chart, but the 12-inch version featured a remix of "The Runner," a Giorgio Moroder-Sheila Ferguson song also on "Viva" that was first made popular by Philly girl group The Three Degrees around the same time as Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here Anymore."
Just old enough to made out to the Rose Royce version in the back seat of my (then) 10y/o 69 Cougar XR7.
ReplyDeletePlayed a Rose Royce CD often, back in the day. What became of them?
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