“Lean on Me” Single by Club Nouveau from the album Life, Love & Pain
B-side “Pump it Up (Reprise)”
Released March 20, 1987
Label Warner Bros.
Songwriter Bill Withers
Producer Jay King
Charted No.1 in US; No.3 in UK; No.1 in Canada; No.1 in New Zeeland
The R&B group Club Nouveau covered the song with go-go beat and took it to number one, for two weeks, on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in March 1987. It also reached number one on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart,] and number two on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, kept out of the top spot by Jody Watley’s “Looking for a New Love”. It won a Grammy Award in 1987 for Bill Withers, as the writer, for Best R&B Song.
This cover of the classic Bill Withers track was good enough to win a Grammy in 1987, but it wasn’t the signpost to bigger things for this pop and New Jack Swing outfit from Sacramento, California. Originally called Jet Set, the group was formed by record producer/performer Jay King and signed to Warner Bros. Their 1986 debut album Life, Love & Pain was a huge US success – and boasted a raft of original material by King and fellow producers Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy. But it was this mid-tempo, gospel-influenced cover version with its big beats, electronic-sounding cowbell, funky keyboards and instantly memorable, heavily-processed backing vocals that made the biggest waves in the UK. At almost six minutes long, it was an ambitious slice of positive pop that kicked against the tight restrictions of US radio playlists.
