Friday, November 2, 2018

"Let's Go All the Way" by Sly Fox

Top 10 Alert!
One-Hit Wonder Alert!
Song#:  2577
Date:  12/28/1985
Debut:  85
Peak:  7
Weeks:  25
Genre:  Synthpop



Pop Bits:  Sly Fox were an assembled duo put together by producer Ted Currier. He first brought on board Gary "Mudbone" Cooper of Bootsy's Rubber Band for the project. Then Currier had the idea to hire in a white singer and play up the black/white race angle of the duo. Currier found jingle singer Michael Camacho and Sly Fox was set to go. With Currier producing, the duo recorded their debut album for Capitol titled Let's Go All the Way. This title-track would be issued out as a single. It would be a slow-burner that would ease its way up the chart until it finally cracked the Top 10. It would be a middling entry at R&B reaching #57. The hit would help sell albums and it would get to #31, which was a good showing for a debut. It set them up well for further success, but artistic differences and other issues arose and the duo called it quits before they could issue out a second album. Besides a very low charting second single, this song was their only major hit and it got them tagged as a one-hit wonder.

ReduxReview:  The production and arrangement were really the highlights on this song. I remember buying the single and it sounded so damn good cranked up on my stereo. It also helped that it was hooky as hell. Yet this song was such a distinctive hit that none of their other material could gain any attention and as happens with a lot of groups that are put together by someone else, they didn't last very long. They got the one-hit wonder tag, but at least they earned it with a pretty cool song that folks still like.

ReduxRating:  8/10

Trivia:  For many folks, this song's beat sounded awfully familiar. A few months earlier, a hip hop group named The Boogie Boys had a #6 R&B hit with a song titled "A Fly Girl." The beat of that song was nearly identical to the one used on "Let's Go All the Way." Did Sly Fox rip it off? Not necessarily as both songs just happened to be produced by Ted Currier. Currier actually recorded "Let's Go All the Way" first and thought it turned out so good that he played it for the Boogie Boys, whom he had started working with. Apparently, Boogie Boy member Stro loved it as well and ended up writing a rap over the beat. This impressed Currier and he decided to adjust the beat track from "Let's Go" for the new rap song "A Fly Girl." Timeline wise, "A Fly Girl" came out during the summer while "Let's Go didn't appear until the end of the year making it seem like "Let's Go" ripped off "Fly Girl." Yet it was just a case of same producer and same beat applied to two different styles of music.

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