"Abracadabra" is a song by American rock group Steve Miller Band, written by Steve Miller. The song was released as the first single from the 1982 album of the same name. The song is said to have been inspired by the American singer Diana Ross with whom Miller had met while performing together on Hullabaloo in the 1960s and is listed at #70 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of all time.
The song became a worldwide hit, charting in ten countries and topping the charts in six countries, and has become one of the band's biggest hits, along with "The Joker" and "Rock'n Me".
In the United States, the song was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two non-consecutive weeks. It knocked Chicago's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" out of the #1 spot, just as Chicago had done to the Steve Miller Band in 1976 when "If You Leave Me Now" knocked "Rock'n Me" out of the #1 spot.
The single version of the song appears in several Steve Miller Band compilation albums such as Young Hearts as well as on the Time-Life compilation Sounds of the Eighties: 1980–1982 and on a CD of songs hand-picked by Guy Fieri titled Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives: Road Songs That Rock. Capitol issued an alternate version on a promotional single (Capitol Records #SPRO 9797) for radio airplay; it featured a slightly slower tempo, verses in a different order, and refrain vocals that lacked the extra inflection at the end of the word "Abracadabra" that's present in the other versions. A live version of the song was released on Steve Miller Band Live! in 1983.
No comments:
Post a Comment