Blogocentric Formulations

Don't Leave Me This Way

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Song: "Don't Leave Me This Way"
Original: Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes
Cover: Thelma Houston

As much as I enjoy the Communards' cover of this song, I had to go with the Thelma Houston disco classic. This is another one that I didn't know was a cover (full disclosure: I didn't even know who Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes were until I started researching this song), but I've been familiar with Thelma Houston's more recognizable version for a long time.

I'm not a huge fan of disco (like, at all), but there are a handful of songs that I can't help but enjoy and this is one of them. It seems that I'm not alone in that either; it ranked #86 on VH1's "100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders" and #2 on their "100 Greatest Dance Songs." At 69 years old, Thelma Houston is still out there performing and while she never had another hit quite as big as this one, I think a musician can do a lot worse than a single iconic song that helped define an entire musical era.