The Number Fortys: Jeffrey Osborne - "Stay With Me Tonight"

In The Number Fortys, we review every song that was sitting at #40 on the Billboard chats, starting in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either).

The lyrics read like an attempted translation in an ESL class that got the student a B-minus (Sung Kim, see me after class).

Another morning, you are on my mind
Takin' up my time throughout the day
I try controllin' images I see
Always you with me, that's in my dreams

You give me fever, love I can't explain
Fire uncontained, what is this, girl?
I try to fight, but I never win
Seems I just give in to your embrace

Luckily for Jeffrey (with two F's, and never Jeff), the rhythm section here is so strong that even if he never sang a word, this still could have been a hit. The fact the drummer in the video is smoking while he plays just makes him more of a badass. Can't be sure the drummer in the video is the drummer on the song, of course, but Steve Ferrone played on Scritti Polliti's Cupid and Psyche 85, which would sound a lot like this song. The bass player, Alphonso Johnson, was in Weather Report, and his slap bass here is good enough to make the idea of good slap bass an idea I can almost get behind.

It's hard to follow the story. There's a subplot that suggests Osborne is being coerced into these nightly fuck sessions, but it goes unexplored, and even gets contradicted in several places. Either way, Jeffrey Osborne does the best he can with it. Again, it's got a solid groove, and the melody does a nice job in the chorus of building to a climax (ooh!), which is kind of ingenious the way it syncs up with the subject matter, also supported by the agitated restless nature of the verses. This is top quality songwriting, melodically at least, and, as such, would climb all the way to ....number 30? Ah well. There was a lot of competition that year, and thanks to the pernicious influence of MTV, 1984 was not a good year to be a black person trying to crack the Top 40 (Stay With Me Tonight did reach #4 on the R&B charts).

It gets a solid 6 for the kick.

By the way, Osborne is a singer who, to me, can never be forgiven for his woo woo woo song that I had to listen to on the magic soft hits station 40 hours of week when I was working at the Singing Hills Lodge for two years (I got robbed at gun point, then promoted, then fired for, and I still have the letter, "playing solitaire on the computer and being sarcastic with his co-workers"). It's a fucking 0, and now you too shall have to suffer and hear it.

THE NUMBER ONE

We'll just pretend that video doesn't exist, because I'm not about to unpack the "Mississippi - 1870" setting going on here. Let's just sit back and appreciate the moment when Boy George, dressed in full makeup, sings the line "I'm a man." That's the kind of pop moment the three minute single was invited for. The fact that it echoes Muddy Waters, The Yardbirds, Spencer Davis while genderfucking them into oblivion is absolutely perfect.