Man, in the eighties, nobody was talking like this. It was kinda refreshing. Kinda nice. Ladies and gentleman, I give you one hit wonder Jermaine Stewart and your K-101.7 Song Of The Day! READ ON!

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In the U.K. they released this song as "We Don't Have To." Why, British record industry, why? The title is perfect in full. The message is there. This anomly of a song, about one person coming onto another and that person saying, hey, dere, let's slow dis here train down a bit there, partner. What's the hurry? Especially in the coked up, ambition crazed NOW NOW NOW era of the 1980's. Maybe there was some fear of the great phantom of the 80's, the AIDS virus, in there, sneaking around inside the protagonist's motivation. From the song's Wikipedia page, "in 1988, Stewart was interviewed and spoke of the lyrical message within the song. "I think it made a lot of peoples' minds open up a little bit. We didn't only want to just talk about clothes, we wanted to extend that. We wanted to use the song as a theme to be able to say you don't have to do all the negative things that society forces on you. You don't have to drink and drive. You don't have to take drugs early. The girls don't have to get pregnant early. So the clothes bit of it was to get people's attention, which it did and I'm glad it was a positive message."

 

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The song, boosted by an appearance on Miami Vice, zoomed up the charts, fully clothed, and hit number five. Sadly, the artist, Jermaine Stewart, died of AIDS-related liver cancer on March 17, 1997 at age 39. Let's all pay tribute to his big hit, and make it your-

-K101.7 SONG OF THE DAY!

 

And, hey, while you are down here at the bottom of the story, why not spend a couple extra minutes here and check out this fun thing we did, why not, already?

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