Bananarama “Venus” b/w “White Train” 1986. London Records. 45rpm. “Venus” was #1 on the Billboard charts this week back in ‘86 and also topped the charts in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Mexico, and South Africa but only reached #8 in the British group’s home country. The single appears on the band’s third album “True Confessions.”

Bananarama’s cover of the 1969 song, written by Robbie van Leeuwen, first charted in 1970 when the Dutch band Shocking Blue took the song to number one. You can hear that version here with a slower tempo and a 60′s jangly-psychedelic-guitar sound. I, of course, love the 80′s version, all dancey and new-wavey, and I still like to do the “Venus” arm-dancing moves I mastered from watching Bananarama’s version, which was played incessently on MTV during the late summer/early fall of ‘86.