John Paul Young ~ Love Is In The Air 1978 Disco Purrfection Version

Back in late 1978, there was a cover war on the song “Love Is In The Air“ by John Paul Young with the contender being Canadian singer Martin Stevens, whose version pretty closely copied Young’s arrangement. On US radio, Young’s version was played, while in Canada we never heard anyone’s version but Martin Stevens. This sort of situation arose due to the Canadian content laws, where two of the following points out of four had to be met in order to be played without restriction in Canada. Music written by Canadian, Artist is Canadian, Performance recorded in Canada and Lyrics written by a Canadian. This process was put in place to ensure that Canadian artists had a level playing field against the US powerhouse music acts to allow Canadian culture to flourish. Hit songs that did not make the cut had their airplay severely limited. Since Young’s version would have not gotten enough airplay the copyright holders agreed to allow Stevens to record the song and sell it in Canada. US DJ’s faced a similar choice since both versions were made available to them, each version had its pros and cons, according to disco historian Vince Aletti. The main difference was that the Stevens version added an instrumental break that was not in Young’s original version. Where Young’s version had more personality in the vocals, Martin’s version was a little less colorful. The battle famously played itself out on the Canadian charts on Toronto’s CHUM radio where both versions charted. Stevens’s version debuted on the chart October 7, 1978, at no. 11, six weeks after John Paul Young’s version which was no. 12 at that point. The following week they shared the 10th place position, and were listed at the same position for the remainder of both versions’ run of the CHUM chart. Both versions stayed on the chart until the end of November. “Love Is In The Air“ came about after Young had a hit in Germany with “Standing In The Rain“ and wanted to do a follow up for that market. He remembered that Germany was in the throes of electro-mania (Giorgio Moroder) and decided to record a song to feature those elements. Writers Harry Vanda & George Young went ahead and produced the song for Young, and released the “Love Is In The Air“ LP in Europe in 1977 and North America in 1978. The song became Young’s only Top 40 hit, peaking at #7 in the US and spent two weeks at #1 on the Adult Contemporary charts there. It was a worldwide smash and instantly became a disco classic, with Tom Jones recording his version in 1979. The song was revived when Baz Luhrmann used it in 1992’s “Strictly Ballroom“. In 2000 John Paul Young performed the song at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games. Deep in the vaults somewhere is Cher’s version which was recorded during her “Believe“ sessions, but it remains unreleased. An interesting footnote to Young’s career was his involvement with a 1995 recording project called “Stairways To Heaven“, where various artists were asked to take the Led Zeppelin original and perform it in a variety of styles. For example Rolf Harris recorded his version that was a sound-alike for his major hit “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport“, there was an Elvis “Viva Las Vegas“ version, a B-52’s Rock Lobster version, The Beatles early upbeat sound and The Beatles Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds Version, The Doors, an Andrew Lloyd Webber version and a version by John Paul Young who did it to sound like “Love Is In The Air“. Check out his discofied version of “Stairway To Heaven“ here Wacky wacky wacky! Apparently there were so many submissions, a lot of versions were not released from artists like Prince and Cher.