19. Venus (Shocking Blue)
The distinctive guitar riff was taken from The Who's "Pinball
Wizard."
The female vocal trio Bananarama recorded this in 1986. It
was one of the first songs they started performing when they formed the band.
Lead singer Robbie Van Leeuwen wrote this. The group is from
The Netherlands.
This was produced by Jerry Ross, who also produced another
Dutch group, Tee Set, who performed "Ma Belle Amie". Ross also
produced an album of orchestral arrangements of his (primarily) Dutch stable of
hits, under the name Jerry Ross Symposium.
In the US, both this and the Bananarama cover version
reached #1, making it one of the few songs to do so. Strangely, in the UK both
Shocking Blue and Bananarama reached #8 with "Venus" and both spent
13 weeks on the chart with the song.
On an episode of the MTV cartoon Beavis And Butthead,
Butthead makes up his own lyrics to this but gets frustrated when he can't
think of anything that rhymes with "Venus."
In Shocking Blue's home country, this never made it to #1.
After the success in the States, the song was re-released, but climbed no
further that #3 in the Dutch Pop charts. In 1959, Frankie Avalon had a US #1
hit with the same title. There were 2 other instances of different songs with
identical titles reaching #1 on the Billboard charts. "My Love"
was #1 for Petula Clark in 1966 and another "My Love" turned the
trick for McCartney and Wings in 1973. Then "Best Of My Love" topped
the charts for the Eagles in 1973 and a different song of the same title was #1
for The Emotions in 1977.