Tony Carey - "A Fine Fine Day"

(Debuted March 3, 1984, Peaked #22, 15 Weeks on the Chart)

While largely seen as a One-Hit Wonder, Tony Carey had been active in the music business for a decade before "A Fine Fine Day" became his biggest hit. He had been a member of Rainbow during the late 1970s and fronted The Planet P Project in the early 1980s. The two bands could not have been more different; Rainbow was a hard rock outfit, while The Planet P Project was an experimental outlet. As a keyboardist, the two acts suited Carey, though.

Eventually, Carey cut some solo records as well. In 1984, he appeared with an album called Some Tough City, a collection of songs about people struggling (and often failing) to stay afloat in the big city. One of those characters was "Uncle Sonny" in "A Fine Fine Day," who was shown in the video (shown below) to be a Mafia associate who'd run afoul of his old friends after leaving prison, but whose fate in the song is rather vague.

The images in the video were a stark contrast; the bright harmonies of the synthesizer and the hopeful sound of the chorus didn't exactly match the visuals. To me, that was part of its charm. Here's a song that acknowledges that life isn't always nice or easy, even when it seems that way on the exterior.