Unfairly Forgotten Song #6: Love Me All Up by Stacy Earl

By 1991, contemporary hit radio (top 40) was splintering. There were still top 40 stations playing the full spectrum of songs that were actually on the top 40, but some stations were trending toward more of a hip-hop sound. At the same time, some stations (notably in my part of the country, 97.1 the Eagle (KEGL) in Dallas/Ft. Worth) trended toward rock, while still other formerly great stations (such as, off the top of my head, KAY-107 (KAYI) in Tulsa) turned to a format called "adult top 40", which they advertised as having "no hard rock and no rap". Basically, adult top 40 was watered-down radio.

Anyway, some of these adult top 40 stations, such as, for example, KAY-107, didn't even play some of the best dance tracks from the period, such as this one from Stacy Earl, who recorded one album and then disappeared for some reason. "Love Me All Up" was Ms. Earl's first hit and made it to the top 20 of Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay list (which "American Top 40" was using by then), peaking at #18 and spending a total of 17 weeks on the list (as well as 18 weeks on the Hot 100, where it peaked at #26) before inexplicably being dropped from the playlist of pretty much every station everywhere (though it still occasionally pops up on Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber's "Crap From the Past").

(Stacy Earl's self-titled album apparently did not chart, but it did spawn three Top 40 hits.)

And how forgotten is "Love Me All Up"?  Amazon doesn't even offer it as an MP3 download, but you can still buy the album through the links in this post.

Incidentally, "Love Me All Up" was co-written by Richard Rudolph, who was the husband of Minnie Riperton.

As promised, you can use this link to purchase Stacy Earl's self-titled album: