Last night while I was driving home, Bob Seger's "We've Got Tonight" started playing on the radio. Now I like a good deal of Seger's material, and think this is a fine song. But even though I normally frown on remakes, in this instance I really, really think the remake does the original one better. When Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton took their version to the top of the country charts in the early 80s, they showed how simply performing a song as a duet could dramatically affect the impact of a piece. Even listening to Seger's version, I always hear in my head how it should be a duet. Another song that I feel the same about is Billy Joel's "Until the Night" off the 52nd Street album, but to my knowledge, nobody has ever covered that one, much less done it as a duet. But I digress.
No proper MTV-style video exists for the Rogers-Easton "We've Got Tonight," but I haven't let that stop me. In 1983 Easton has a television special, "Sheena Easton: Act I," featuring an array of performances by her as well as duets with Kenny Rogers and Al Jarreau. It also featured Easton's now-vanished Scottish accent (which I always found endearing) as well as her performing Billy Joel's "The Entertainer," sans the verse "Played all kinds of palaces, laid all kinds of girls." And yes, I did own "Act I" back in the day, on Betamax, no less. So enjoy this slice of music history.
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