THIS WEEK IN 1981
1 One Day In Your Life Michael Jackson 2 Being With You Smokey Robinson
3 More Than In Love Kate Robbins and Beyond 4 Teddy Bear Red Sovine
5 Going Back To My Roots Odyssey
6 Ghost Town The Specials
7 How ‘Bout Us Champaign
8 All Stood Still Ultravox
9 Memory Elaine Paige
10 Will You Hazel O’Connor ‘One Day In Your Life’ is not the first song from the MJ catalogue that generally springs to mind, but it was his first solo UK number one and is his fifth biggest hit in that market.
The song may not be remembered at all were it not for Motown’s desire to cash in on Jackson’s success at the start of the eighties. The singer and his Jackson 5 brothers had departed the Motown label after the lacklustre commercial performance of his fourth solo album ‘Forever, Michael’ in 1975.
That album’s tracklisting included ‘One Day In Your Life’, recorded by 16-year-old Jackson the previous year. Two singles were released from ‘Forever, Michael’ but ‘One Day In Your Life’ was not one of them.
Fast forward six years and Michael Jackson’s career had hit another level. His Quincy Jones-produced 1979 album ‘Off The Wall’, on the Epic label, had been a global smash, spawning a string of hit singles. (It’s sold some 20 million copies since release and is now considered one of the greatest albums ever recorded.)
Keen to cash in, Motown revisited the archives of their former artist and cobbled together a compilation album mainly consisting of tracks from ‘Forever, Michael’ and padded out with some old Jackson 5 songs.
The move paid off handsomely for Jackson’s former label. The album sold over two million worldwide and the ‘One Day In Your Life’ single was a major hit, especially in the UK and Ireland. – JIM HAYES