UK Number 40s: Dr Hook - Girls Can Get It (1980)

 

When I decided to broaden my horizons beyond dance music in the late 90s, Dr Hook were pretty much the first band outside the genre that I started listening to. The album I own is "Completely Hooked" which is one of their greatest hits compilations. There are 20 tracks on there, but I knew that Dr Hook had nowhere near 20 UK hits. Therefore I thought I knew all of Dr Hook's Top 40 hits plus several more.

It was only a few years ago that I discovered they had a UK Top 40 hit I never knew existing, this one. Despite the fact Dr Hook only had 8 Top 40 hits, this doesn't appear on "Completely Hooked".

If you look at Dr Hook's Top 40 career it's actually quite impressive. They made number 2 with their debut "Sylvia's Mother" in 1972. They would have to wait 4 years until their second, "A Little Bit More" which also made number 2. Later on that year they made number 5 with "If Not You".

Their 4th hit "More Like the Movies" missed out on the Top 10 but 5th hit "When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman" topped the charts in late 1979. That's 4 of their 5 Top 40 hits of the 70s making the Top 5.

They reached number 8 with their first hit of the 80s "Better Love Next Time" and number 4 with follow up "Sexy Eyes", so by this point 5 out of 7 making the Top 5. Their next 2 hits "Years From Now" and "Sharing the Night Together" which both appear on "Completely Hooked" never made the Top 40. Then just a week after the latter reached its peak of 43, this hit it's peak of number 40 exactly a year after they were sitting on top of the charts.

Dr Hook's popularity was in decline during the early 80s and the band themselves were fed up and only continued till the mid-80s to fulfill contractual obligations.

A key event from 1980 though was that they changed record labels and this was the first single to be released from the new label, which could explain its absence from "Completely Hooked". The release of "Sharing the Night Together" just 2 weeks prior was presumably their old label trying to cash in on their back catalogue as it originally appeared on their 1978 album "Pleasure & Pain".