Deniece Williams ~ Let's Hear It For The Boy 1984 Disco Purrfection Version

Back this time of year in 1984, "Footloose" was taking over the charts with Kenny Loggins take on the title track taking the #1 spot for three weeks in March. The second #1 single from the same soundtrack was Deniece Williams "Let's Hear It For The Boy" that spent two weeks on the top at the end of May. I will never forget the scene where Kevin Bacon teaches Christopher Penn to dance when they were both hooked up to the same walkman. However, when the scene was being filmed, Karla Bonoff's "Somebody's Eyes" was the song that was used but by the time they finished the scene, Pitchford was not convinced it still worked. Now he needed to write another song. So he holed up with Tom Snow to write about a song about a girl who is singing about how good her boyfriend is and found it when the lyric "Let's Hear It For The Boy" was conceived. By the next morning the song was written and The next step was to bring producer George Duke and Deniece in the studio. The session was completed and Deniece went back to New York. Pitchford found he was not satisfied with what was recorded and called Deniece telling her that "she must have took the lyric "boy" part too seriously and sang it very girlishly". He told her that the character was not a boy, he was a man and that she needed to re record the song as a woman, not a girl. She hopped the plane to Los Angeles on arriving at 11PM California time, she was rushed straight to the studio. It took all of twenty minutes for her to complete her vocals. "She recut it brilliantly" and that is when they knew it would be a smash.