Song of the Day Apr 4

April 4, 2024

This month I’m focusing on One Hit Wonders of the 90s.

Today our song is:  Get Here

Wikipedia tells us this about the song:

Brenda Russell had written the song while staying at a penthouse in Stockholm: the tune came to her as she viewed some hot air balloons floating over the city, a sight Russell recalls set her "really tripping on how many ways you can get to a person" (the eventual song's lyrics include the line: "You can make it in a big balloon but you'd better make it soon"). Although Russell did not pursue the musical ideas that came to her as her current record label saw her as a dance artist, the song was still in the singer's mind when she woke up the next day: "I don't read or write music [so] it's extraordinary if a song is still in my head that I haven't jotted down or recorded. So if it's still in my head overnight, I think that's something extra special, it's like somebody trying to tell me something." Russell recorded the song as the title cut of her 1988 album from which it was issued as a single – the album's third – reaching number 37 on the US Billboard R&B chart.

American singer-songwriter Oleta Adams released her cover of "Get Here" in 1990 by Mercury, taken from her third studio album, Circle of One (1990). It was while Adams was visiting Stockholm, Sweden that she heard Russell's song playing in a record store and was sufficiently impressed with the song to record it for her album.

World events at this time gave the song a resonance as an anthem for the US troops in the Gulf War—underscored by the lyrics "You can reach me by caravan / Cross the desert like an Arab man"—which sent Adams's single into the top ten of the US Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1991

Enjoy!