"Cherokee" by Europe

Song#:  3347
Date:  11/28/1987
Debut:  91
Peak:  72
Weeks:  10
Genre:  Glam Rock



Pop Bits:  The Swedish band scored their biggest hit with the third single from their album The Final Countdown. "Carrie" would be a solid hit reaching #3 on the Pop chart. Because of that hit, the label thought a fourth single was in order and released this track. It couldn't make much headway on the Pop chart and stalled near the bottom quarter. Europe would then retreat to the studio to work on their follow-up LP.

ReduxReview:  This is an odd song. I'm not sure if it was meant to be a message song or a tribute or something to recognize a particularly horrific historical event or all the above. Whatever the case, it was kind of strange that a Swedish glam rock band would record a song about a horrible period in American history. While I appreciate the attempt, it just didn't work for me. It was just too much of a stretch coming from these guys with huge hair and chart conquering aspirations. As an album track, it could kind of meld in with their other tunes, but it was definitely not a good single choice.

ReduxRating:  4/10

Trivia:  The band's lead singer and main songwriter Joey Tempest got the idea to write this song from a book. Apparently, the wife of the band's producer Keith Elson had a book about Native Americans lying around and Tempest took interest in it. After reading about the plight of the Cherokee nation, he thought the subject could be turned into a song. When the initial tracks for The Final Countdown were finished, the band and their producer thought they needed one more. Tempest brought his new tune "Cherokee" to the table and they decided to record it. Weirdly (and perhaps not Tempest's doing), the video for the song had a lot of historical inaccuracies and wasn't even shot in America. It was filmed in Spain in the same desert area where Clint Eastwood's famous spaghetti westerns like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly were shot. If you look close, there are even cacti in the background that were props left from other shoots.

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