Taylor Dayne "Can't Get Enough of Your Love"

Who dared to remake the classic Barry White song "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Baby"? None other than '80s pop singer Taylor Dayne. She actually dropped the word "babe" from the title and released it in 1993. This marked her last appearance on the Top 40 Chart.

Kenny G "Sentimental"

Kenny G's popular Breathless album helped introduce him to mass-appeal audiences thanks to songs like "Forever in Love" and "By the Time This Night Is Over". For me, it became a staple of my Saturday afternoons. Working as a busboy at a banquet hall in my hometown of Schererville, Indiana, I spent Saturday nights working what was usually two to three wedding receptions. Arriving around 5pm, I'd make it in time to hear the DJs test their equipment. Like clockwork, they always cycled through Kenny G's Breathless album which led our senior busboy Nick to proclaim it "wine music". To this date, I'm still sentimental about it...

Ray Charles "A Song for You"

When more than 200 artists line up to sing a tune, you call that song an American Classic. That's exactly how Elton John described "A Song for You". Originally recorded by Leon Russell in 1970, artists such as Cher, Whitney Houston, Willie Nelson, Michael Buble, and Simply Red are some of the numerous names who've recorded the song. Ray Charles' version earned him a Grammy Award in 1994 for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

Spin Doctors "Two Princes"

Could the Spin Doctors help enhance the flavor of your food? Oxford University researchers believe so. Their research claims Chinese food tastes better with pop music -- specifically Taylor Swift's "Blank Space". But wait, there's more! Sushi goes best with Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World". Can music make your Thai taste better? You better believe it, buster! Add some Buble...specifically Michael Buble. These fine researchers also determined the taste of Mexican food was eight times better while listening to the Spin Doctors. Yes, the Spin Doctors! Now, that's research money well spent...

PM Dawn "Looking Through Patient Eyes"

PM Dawn's catchy tune "Looking Through Patient Eyes" incorporates the hook from George Michael's "Father Figure" and features Cathy Dennis on backup vocals.

Phil Collins "Both Sides of the Story"

Phil Collins is most-proud of his Both Sides album. He's mentioned that it's his favorite album. In a departure from previous albums, he produced it all by himself in his home studio. While not a huge commercial success, the album did produce the radio hits "Everyday" and "Both Sides of the Story".

Sting "Seven Days"

Tasked with creating a project for our literature class, I suggested the idea to my classmates Pat and Tony where we would create a radio interview show. Looking for a theme song to the show (tragically called "Dead Poet's Society"), I cued up Ten Summoner's Tales from Sting. After stumbling upon "Seven Days", I knew I had our show's theme song. During the show, I interviewed the tragic main character from Jack London's "To Build A Fire" as well as another character who escapes me some 25 years later. I added some commercials and other comedy bits and proudly turned it in to our teacher, Mr. Osana. I didn't expect Mr. Osana to play our project for the entire class to hear, but, alas, he did. This inspired some other people in my class to do their own version of "Dead Poet's Society". In the end, ours was still better.

Regina Belle "If I Could"

When you're about to lose your job, your brain switches into survival mode. In my case, I knew the radio station where I worked for nearly a decade was about to flip formats and, soon, I would be unemployed. My supervisor (who also knew he was losing his job) suggested I apply for a job at a radio station in Georgia. This position required extensive on-air experience which I lacked; I had been working in an off-air position as a morning show producer. My supervisor didn't see this as a problem. Instead, he suggested I take action during the short amount of time I had before losing my current job.

His instructions were simple: the show I produced started at 5:30 A.M., so show up at 5:00 A.M. and tell the overnight guy "Oh, didn't Harrison tell you? The show's gonna start at five now.". When the overnight guy double-checked with our supervisor, he gave the all-clear which resulted in: The Todd Show. I didn't call it this, but rather the host of the morning show I produced named it as such. He listened on his way into work each morning and started our show discussing The Todd Show. Fully expecting to be fired within a day or two, I figured my show had about four shows. Instead, The Todd Show lasted for nearly three weeks. I survived the World Series and then the Bush - Kerry presidential election of 2004. For three weeks, I showed up extra-early to pour what little energy I had into 30 minutes of The Todd Show before finally getting axed in the beginning of November.

That job in Georgia? I never applied for it. With opportunities in Milwaukee and Chicago, I (host of The Todd Show) stayed put and that decision paid off.

Expose "As Long as I Can Dream"

What comes to mind when you think about your recurring dreams? Maybe it's that dream when your teeth fall out or the one where you're back in school and have to take a test for something you haven't studied. Those two dreams immediately come to mind for me. Aside from those, I have this recurring dream that I'm back working as a Classified Sales Manager at the former Dog World Magazine in a position I held from 1999 until early-2002. In that entry-level role, each month I'd mail out renewal contracts to our annual advertisers of the classified section of the magazine. This contract would lock them into the lowest rate ($12/month) for a 20-word ad. For whatever reason, I still have this dream (nightmare?) where I forgot to mail the contracts and I'm frantically going through my list of advertisers (there were about 1,100 of them) and calling each one to see if they want to run their ad(s). Seeing as I haven't worked there in nearly 17 years, I'm curious why this dream still plays in my brain.

Wilson Phillips "Hey Santa!"

Christmas music is broken into two categories: vintage and original songs. Usually artists remake "White Christmas" and throw it to radio stations who gobble it up during their annual All Christmas Music format flip. In the case of Wilson Phillips, the duo reunited following a short hiatus to release a Christmas album called "Hey Santa!". The album gave birth to the title track which went on to annually hurt my eardrums.

Michael W. Smith "Somebody Love Me"

Michael W. Smith is the male-version of Amy Grant: successful Christian pop artist who crossed over at about the same time as Amy Grant. In fact, Michael opened for Amy twice during the 1980s.

Chris Isaak "Can't Do Anything (to Stop Me)"

A man begins an affair with a woman and then the two are unable to stop it. That's the story behind Chris Isaak's sultry ballad "Can't Do Anything (to Stop Me)". The steamy ballad made its way onto Adult Contemporary radio in 1993 accompanied by a sultry video (by 1993 standards) that aired on VH-1.

(The following is an alternate blog post for today) 

Before I write these, I always make it a point to listen to the songs on YouTube. Why? Well, if it's a terrible song--I feel it's my duty to listen to the song as it wouldn't be fair to make you read about something that I avoided, right? The same goes with songs that I liked back in the day. Will my like/dislike of the song(s) hold up today? That question typically isn't a slam-dunk. In the case of "Can't Do Anything (to Stop Me)", prior to today, I never heard of the song. While perusing the list of popular Adult Contemporary songs from April 1993, I spotted this sultry Chris Isaak tune and immediately went to YouTube to give it a listen. Believe it or not, I found myself intrigued. This song, much like its theme of an affair that neither side can stop, was irresistible. Even if the song continued another five minutes or so, I would have felt cheated. So far, I've listened to it four times and I have no plan on stopping...

Eric Clapton "Running on Faith"

Credit Eric Clapton's MTV Unplugged album for introducing me to three-time inductee to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame (thanks to his work in Cream, the Yardbirds and his solo efforts). The acoustic album recorded for MTV's Unplugged series contained the tear-jerker "Tears in Heaven", a neutered version of his signature "Layla" as well as "Running on Faith"--a cut from his 1989 Journeyman album. While thinking about it, Unplugged was only part of how I discovered Clapton. My parents divorced in 1992 and both eventually re-joined the dating world. It was a strange time for all involved including me. As much as I knew my parents marriage wasn't ever going to work, it was weird to watch them both date. For my dad, he moved out of our house and gradually introduced us to his lady friends. We lived with my mom in the house my parents built, so her private life wasn't so private. Almost immediately, she started dating a man named Steve. Steve was a soft-spoken used car salesman who looked like a cross between Eric Clapton and Kenny Loggins. Steve later opened his own car lot, and I created a fake radio commercial for him. The commercial "aired" within a series of songs on my fake radio station that broadcast from my bedroom. Whenever Steve was driving with friends in the car, he would cue up the cassette tape and say, "Oh, it's almost time for my radio commercial to air." His friends were always quite impressed when it did "air" -- twenty-five years later, I'm still creating commercials...but this time for three Chicago radio stations.

Cranberries "Linger"

Every emotion during those formidable teenage years gets magnified because those feelings (mixed with out of control hormones) are new. Having never dealt with them before, we find ourselves wrapped up in things that later in life would seem to be no big deal. In turn, music from those teenage years become a part of us. They become as much a part of our identity as our names and become locked into our memories so much so that decades later we can hear a song from our youth and immediately get transported back in time.

Sade "No Ordinary Love"

Now, when I have problems with my
relationships, which is most of the time,
I find out that it's better to take the
focus off myself and put it to others.
I don't wanna be around no kids.
I wanna go home and sit in my house
and look at the wall and listen to Sade.
- And that's fun?
- No, but that's where my head is at.
That's where I need to be. I don't wanna
paint. You can't paint my misery away.

Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=boomerang

"Now when I have problems with my relationships, which is most of the time, I find that it's better to take focus off myself and put it to others."

"I don't wanna be around no kids. I wanna go home and sit in my house and look at the wall and listen to Sade."

"And that's fun?"

"No, but that's where my head is at. That's where I need to be." 

                                               -Halle Berry & Eddie Murphy in the 1992 movie Boomerang 

The BoDeans "Closer to Free"

What do you remember about the Fox television show Party of Five? Neve Campbell? Scott Wolf? How about the show's theme song "Closer to Free"? That song, from the group's fifth album, helped make The BoDeans a household name. Originally released in 1993, the song saw a renaissance thanks to Adult Contemporary radio in 1996.

Roy Orbison & k.d. lang "Crying"

The duet between Roy Orbison and k.d. lang recorded for the 1987 movie, Hiding Out, resurfaced as an Adult Contemporary hit in 1993. The song was one of a handful of song released on King of Hearts, an Orbison album posthumously. Orbison originally hit #1 with the song in 1961.

Soul Asylum "Runaway Train"

Most high school teenagers returned home from a weekend night out smelling of sex, drugs or cigarettes. In my (and my friend John's) case, we came home with the curious scent of diesel fuel. Allow me to explain. The two of us were train fanatics (lovingly referred to as "rail fans") and grew up alongside a short line railroad that dotted past our subdivision. The once proud mainline railroad tracks turned into a weedy and forgotten line that shipped auto parts to a couple Ford plants in the area. John and I spent countless days walking the rusted rails that connected our small Indiana town to a series of nearby towns. Our daily trek turned into weekly and infrequent treks as we eventually grew up and started dating, going to parties and doing what "normal" teenagers do on weekends. Occasionally, we'd still make a late night walk down the tracks on late Saturday nights when the train did not run. Since we attended different high schools, our walks provided us the opportunity to talk and catch up on each other's lives.

During one cold Saturday night walk, we decided to escape from the cold and sought shelter. Seeing that no trains ran on Saturday nights, we climbed inside the unlocked idling locomotive that was parked in the freight yard on the outskirts of town and defrosted. The two of us chatted while also keeping our eyes on car traffic traveling through the rural roads near the rail yard. Any car that turned off the main road and onto the side road made my heart speed up a bit because the side road connected to a rock road that led to the rail yard where we were currently trespassing. After nearly a dozen cars turned onto the side road, our worst fears came true. A car slowed after turning onto the side road and then made the dreaded right turn onto the road toward the rail yard where John and I sat in a locomotive. Without hesitation, the two of us bolted out of the locomotive cab and started running down the railroad tracks. Neither of us looked back as we both ran for nearly five minutes.

Once the two of us made it out of the yard and onto the old mainline track, we stopped to catch our breath and voiced our wonder if the car that pulled into the lot was a railroad employee or just someone taking a random shortcut. After getting to a safe distance far enough away but within eye shot of the rail yard office, we both noticed a car parked outside the office. It was definitely a railroad employee. We believed we were in the clear and headed for home.

About ten minutes or so later, a nagging feeling kept making me feel like the two of us were being followed. I briefly turned my head and, over my shoulder, saw two headlights approaching us. The railroad police! (Yes, there is such a thing as the railroad police.) After years of walking these rails (also known as trespassing), we finally were suspects of the railroad police and, worse yet, they were on our tails. John and I again started sprinting toward home (a good mile in the distance)...but first, we had to cross the railroad tower that sat in our way.

Underneath the busy Route 41 bridge sat a tower where an operator worked to keep trains from running into one another by throwing switches and tracking the numerous local trains that passed through the area. As John and I approached this tower, we noticed the operator turned on every exterior light. Passing the tower was the only way to outrun the police, and our only route home. We both zipped up our coats and lowered our baseball caps as we entered the brightness of the tower. I expected to see a police cruiser parked at the tower as I sprinted past the tower. Thankfully, there was no police car, but the tower operator stood tall in the upstairs window keeping watch as John and I continued our mad dash home. We managed to outrun the approaching railroad police car and the tower operator, and were almost home.

Before finally reaching the park where an hour ago we casually entered these railroad tracks, we knew one final obstacle could potentially block us. Another road paralleled the tracks and we feared another police cruiser would be waiting for us. Before reaching the park, we detoured through a neighboring forest and snaked our way to a small creek where we turned and ended up in the backyard of another friend's home. With no sign of the police, we quickly returned to the streets and made it to our respective homes. We both had a difficult time sleeping that night.

Celine Dion & Clive Griffin "When I Fall in Love"

This July marks the 25th anniversary of the romantic comedy "Sleepless in Seattle" that centers on a boy who urges his widowed father to phone into a local radio show to talk about how much he misses his wife. The movie's soundtrack featured an updated version of the ballad "When I Fall in Love". Originally, Celine Dion was to sing alongside Stevie Wonder in the song--but the role later went to British pop singer Clive Griffin.

Billy Joel "The River of Dreams"

Turn on a Top 40 radio station today, and you'll hear Childish Gambino, Drake and Camila Cabello. Turn on a Top 40 radio station in 1993, and you would've heard UB40, Mariah Carey and "The River of Dreams" from Billy Joel.