Sylvia - "Nobody"

(Debuted August 28, 1982, Peaked #15, 19 Weeks on the Chart)  

Country crossover hits were a big deal in the early 1980s. Though the film Urban Cowboy gets a lot of credit for starting the trend, it had really started in the 1970s when Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Eddie Rabbitt, Crystal Gayle, Anne Murray and Barbara Mandrell helped usher in a new brand of country music that really sounded a lot like adult contemporary music. "Nobody" was a latecomer to the crossover era, as the "craze" was winding its way down as country music slowly but surely started to embrace its roots during the 1980s. In fact, the week after "Nobody" hit #1 on the Billboard country charts, it relinquished the top spot to "Fool Hearted Memory," the very first of many #1 singles by George Strait. In that respect, a new era was just beginning.

"Nobody" is a tune about a lover who's feeling she's about to become an ex-lover. The signs are apparent: claims of late nights at the office, a mysterious woman calling on the phone, sly looks as other women pass, and his claiming the woman is simply "nobody." While the song is a reminder that all he wants to have is available for him, perhaps it's time she begins considering him to be "nobody." Just a thought.

Not to be confused with the Sylvia who scored the 1973 hit "Pillow Talk" (that was Sylvia Robinson, formerly of the 1950s duo Mickey & Sylvia and the founder of Sugar Hill Records),  this Sylvia continued to have hits for a few more years, until country began to toss aside its old "Countrypolitan" artists in the mid-to-late 1980s. It would be her only hit on the pop chart, though.