"The Girl I Used To Know" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Brother Beyond | ||||
from the album Trust (U.S. Edition) | ||||
Released | 1990 | |||
Recorded | 1990 | |||
Genre | Pop | |||
Length | 4:24 | |||
Label | Parlophone | |||
Songwriter(s) | Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers | |||
Producer(s) | Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers | |||
Brother Beyond singles chronology | ||||
|
"The Girl I Used to Know" is a 1990 pop single from the boyband Brother Beyond. The song was recorded specifically for the American edition of their second album Trust , released in mid-1990, with the European edition, which was released in 1989, not containing the song. The song saw a change in the band's musical direction as this track was more funk-orientated and had less of the Motown sound of their earlier work. The song was written and produced by American producers Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers. [1] [2]
First released as a single in the US in mid-1990, the track proved to be the group's only single to enter the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #27. Singer Nathan Moore has alleged the band were required to pay £100,000 to the mafia as part of a payola strategy to secure US airplay for the single. [3]
The song also peaked at #62 in Canada. In the UK and Europe, the single was released as a non-album single in 1991, peaking at #48 in the UK in January of that year. This would be the group's last single to chart, and they disbanded not long after, with record label EMI dumping them amid promotion for the track. [3]
A video for the song directed by Anton Corbijn featuring the band driving in a convertible motor was shot in the Sahara Desert in southern Morocco in November 1990. [4] These were interspersed with black and white studio scenes of the band performing.
Bananarama are an English pop group formed in London in 1980. The group, originally a trio, consisted of friends Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey, and Keren Woodward. Fahey left the group in 1988 and was replaced by Jacquie O'Sullivan until 1991, when the trio became a duo. Their success on both pop and dance charts saw them listed in the Guinness World Records for achieving the world's highest number of chart entries by an all-female group. Between 1982 and 2009, they had 32 singles reach the Top 50 of the UK Singles Chart.
Sonia Evans, known mononymously as Sonia, is an English pop singer from Liverpool. She had a 1989 UK number one hit with "You'll Never Stop Me Loving You" and became the first female UK artist to achieve five top 20 hit singles from one album. She represented the United Kingdom in the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest, where she finished second with the song "Better the Devil You Know".
Stock Aitken Waterman are an English songwriting and record production trio consisting of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken, and Pete Waterman. The trio had great success from the mid-1980s through to the early-1990s. SAW is considered one of the most successful songwriting and producing partnerships of all time by the Guinness World Records, scoring more than 100 UK Top 40 hits and earning an estimated £60 million in royalties. The trio had 13 UK No. 1 singles including three consecutive UK No. 1's and three US No. 1 singles. They also had at least one record in the UK Top 100 Singles Chart every week between March 1986 and October 1990.
Dead or Alive were an English pop band who released seven studio albums from 1984 to 2000. The band formed in 1980 in Liverpool and found success in the mid-1980s, releasing seven singles that made the UK Top 40 and three albums in the UK Top 30. At the peak of their success, the line-up consisted of Pete Burns (vocals), Steve Coy (drums), Mike Percy (bass), and Tim Lever (keyboards), with the core pair of Burns and Coy writing and producing for the remainder of the band's career due to Percy and Lever exiting the group in 1989. Burns died in 2016; with the death of Coy in 2018, the band ended.
Peter Jozzeppi Burns was an English singer, songwriter and television personality who formed the band Dead or Alive in 1980 during the new wave era and acted as the band's lead vocalist and principal songwriter. He sold over 17 million albums and 36 million singles worldwide and also gave successful English songwriting and record production trio Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) their first UK No. 1 hit single. His first three albums all reached the UK Top 30, with Youthquake reaching the Top 10. Additionally, the band had seven UK Top 40 singles, two US Top 20 singles and another two singles which went to No. 1 on the US Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. In 2016, Billboard ranked Dead or Alive as one of the most successful "dance artists" of all time.
"You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" is a song by the English pop band Dead or Alive, featured on their second studio album, Youthquake (1985). Released as a single in November 1984, it reached No. 1 in the UK in March 1985, taking 17 weeks to get there. It was the first UK No. 1 hit by the Stock Aitken Waterman production trio.
Lonnie Gordon is an American female dance, pop and R&B singer and songwriter. She scored several chart hits during the 1990s, most notably for her 1990 UK top 10 single "Happenin' All Over Again".
Brother Beyond were a British pop band who had success in the pop rock genre in the late 1980s.
"A Trick of the Night" is a mid-tempo ballad recorded by English girl group Bananarama. It was written and produced by Steve Jolley and Tony Swain and released as the final single from Bananarama's album True Confessions.
"Love in the First Degree" is a song by English girl group Bananarama from their fourth studio album, Wow! (1987). It was released on 21 September 1987 as the album's second single, except in the United States, where it was released in 1988 as the third single. The track was co-written and produced by the Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW) trio. It achieved major success in the UK and Australia, and also peaked within the top 20 in many European countries, but, unlike "I Heard a Rumour", it reached only the lower end of the top 50 in the US.
"You'll Never Stop Me Loving You" is the debut single of English pop singer Sonia. Written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman, the song was included on Sonia's debut album, Everybody Knows (1990). The single became Sonia's only number-one single on the UK Singles Chart and reached number 10 on the US Billboard Dance Club Play chart.
"Happenin' All Over Again" is a song written and produced by Stock Aitken & Waterman (SAW) for American singer Lonnie Gordon's first album, If I Have to Stand Alone (1990). The song mixed SAW's Europop sound with the blooming Italo house music which was becoming big in the UK charts at the time. It was released as the album's second single on January 15, 1990, and reached number four on the UK Singles Chart, but this 1990 version was never released in the US. A different version of the song was included on Gordon's 1993 album Bad Mood, and this version was released as a US single in 1993, peaking at number 98 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at number one on the Billboard Dance chart. In 1998, Gordon recorded the song for a second time and released it as a single.
Trust is the second album of the British boy band / pop group Brother Beyond, released in 1989, by EMI / Parlophone. It was their last album, since they disbanded. After their two major hits, "The Harder I Try" and "He Ain't No Competition", written for them by famous producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the band, as lead singer Nathan Moore puts it on his Official Website, "made the classic mistake of thinking they did not need Stock Aitken and Waterman... We wrote the whole of the next album ourselves and (it) bombed totally". The three singles taken from the Trust album were only minor hits, getting no higher than the UK Top 40. The first, "Drive On", which was also the opening track of Side 2 on the vinyl edition, got to Number 39, in October 1989. The second, "When Will I See You Again?", a soulful ballad by The Three Degrees, stopped at Number 43, in December 1989. The third and last, "Trust", the title-track and opener to the whole album, stalled at Number 53, in March 1990.
"Hey There Lonely Girl" is a song released in 1969 by Eddie Holman. The original version, "Hey There Lonely Boy", was recorded in 1963 by Ruby & the Romantics. It was a hit for both of them. It has since been recorded by many other artists.
"That's What Love Can Do" is a song by American female pop group Boy Krazy, written and produced by British hitmaking team Stock Aitken Waterman, and first released in 1991 as Boy Krazy's debut single. Lead vocals were performed by group member Johnna Cummings. This was the only single in which group member Renée Veneziale would be involved, leaving the band in 1991 soon after its release. The song did not become a hit, peaking at number 86 in the UK; however, it reached number 18 in US.
"Beyond Your Wildest Dreams" is a ballad written by British hitmaking team Stock Aitken & Waterman, which was recorded by three of their artists, Lonnie Gordon, Sybil, and Nancy Davis. The songwriters have cited this song as one of the best they ever wrote, and were dissatisfied with its poor chart performance. Gordon and Sybil's versions were released as singles in 1990 and 1993.
"Who's Leaving Who" is a song written by Jack White and Mark Spiro, first recorded by Canadian country singer Anne Murray in 1986. It achieved bigger popularity in Europe when it was covered by British Hi-NRG singer Hazell Dean in 1988. David Hasselhoff covered the song on his 1991 album David, produced by Jack White.
"The Harder I Try" is a song by British boyband Brother Beyond. Written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman, it was released on 18 July 1988 by Parlophone as the fifth single from the band's debut album, Get Even (1988). The song peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart the following month. It was a number-one hit in Ireland and entered the top 10 in Iceland while peaking within the top 20 in Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland.
"He Ain't No Competition" is a 1988 single released by British boyband Brother Beyond. It reached No.6 in the UK charts in September 1988. The song was written by its three producers, the Stock Aitken Waterman trio. The song is considered the follow-up to the highly commercially successful "The Harder I Try".
"Say I'm Your Number One" is a song by English singer Princess, released in 1985 as the lead single from her self-titled debut studio album (1986). Written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), the song peaked at number seven on the UK Singles Chart. In the United States, it reached number 20 on Billboard's Hot Black Singles chart, while it reached the top ten in the UK and several of European and Oceanian countries.
Welch co-wrote "What The Water Gave Me" with Francis "Eg" White, a producer who'd worked on Lungs. White had been one of the kids in Brother Beyond, a British boy band who were huge during the one year I lived in London as a kid. (In the US, Brother Beyond's only charting single was 1990's "The Girl I Used To Know," which peaked at #27.) After Brother Beyond, White became a behind-the-scenes type, and he's one of the many who worked with both Adele and Florence. (White co-wrote Adele's breakout single, 2007's "Chasing Pavements," which peaked at #21.) So Florence had a steadying pop-industry professional working on her on "What The Water Gave Me," but you can't really tell. That's a good thing.
U.K. quartet Brother Beyond briefly cameo'd on the U.S. pop charts with the jazzy R&B of 1990's Hot 100 top 40 hit "The Girl I Used to Know," but their more delectable entry to the boy band canon came with their breakout hit across the pond, the No. 2-peaking British smash "The Harder I Try." The swinging Stock/Aitken/Waterman-engineered single threw back to '60s Motown better than any U.K. outfit since Wham!, though it was kept off the top of the charts by a couple of actual soul covers: Yazz's "The Only Way Is Up" and Phil Collins' "Groovy Kind of Love." — A.U.website=Billboard