Song of the day for December 5, 2023
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Today’s song is the first solo chart topper by former Go-Go’s front woman Belinda Carlisle, Heaven Is A Place On Earth. This song is from her second solo album Heaven on Earth, and it was released as the lead single from that album. It reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 on December 5, 1987, becoming Carlisle’s only US chart-topper to date. A month later it peaked at number one in the United Kingdom, where it held the top spot of the UK Singles Chart for two weeks. In Australia it peaked at number 2. It is Carlisle’s signature song.
The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1988 but lost out to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”. In 2017, ShortList’s Dave Fawbert listed the song as containing “one of the greatest key changes in music history”.
In 2015, Carlisle re-recorded the song as an acoustic ballad. This version appeared on her album Wilder Shores (2017), which combines acoustic tracks with world beats and traditional Sikh chants.
