Teena Marie - "Lovergirl"

(Debuted December 15, 1984, Peaked #4, 23 Weeks on the Chart)

Today, I get to feature a song that has already appeared over on the 1985 Music Videos blog. It isn't the first time (yesterday's video was the first he featured), but I really want to take the time to give him a plug. While the author (Molten Lava) appears to want to feature the Top 100 videos of the year -- according to MTV -- I think there are a lot of great videos to mine from that year. If you think so, too...go read his blog regularly and let him know. He would love the readership, and there's enough room in the Blogosphere for more 1980s videos.

If you read that article (really, go and read it...I can wait in the meantime), Molten Lava said something that applied for me as well: I wasn't really aware of Teena Marie's career before this song. Yes, Casey Kasem reminded me on his show that Marie was one of the first successful white artists on the Motown label. What I didn't realize was just how many hits she had, because I happened to live in a part of the country where the R&B hits tended to get passed over in the early 1980s unless they were on Kasem's show (Yes, I heard "I Need Your Lovin'," but was too young to know it was also Teena Marie).

"Lovergirl" would be her biggest pop hit, and it contained a really tasty bunch of hooks, but Teena Marie deserves to get a deeper look into her R&B hits.