Touch Me (All Night Long)

Album: Move to This (1991)
Charted: 5 2
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Songfacts®:

  • "Touch Me (All Night Long)" was written by Cathy Dennis (but based on a 1984 song by the group Wish), who had already shown a great deal of promise when this single hit from her debut solo album. Previously she had been with the group D Mob, where their 1989 single "C'mon and Get My Love" had already hit #15 on the UK charts. Previously, she had literally been discovered as a teenager playing piano in her dad's restaurant at age 17; the record producer who signed her was Simon Fuller, the artist manager who also founded the Pop Idol series of TV shows, including American Idol.
  • Not only is "Touch Me (All Night Long)" a love song, but it hints at an illicit tryst as well. Repeatedly there's the line "let your conscience go," and one verse indicates that the singer "wouldn't know what's right from wrong." Even the repeated request to "make me" shows that this is a very submissive song on the feminine part.
  • Dennis scored a worldwide hit with this single, which peaked #1 on the US Dance Chart, #32 on the US Adult Contemporary, and #16 on Australian Singles, besides the hit on US and UK Singles charts.

    While Cathy Dennis continued to score chart-busting hits throughout the 1990s, she's gotten even greater success as a songwriter. She's written songs for the who's-who of the pop world: Spice Girls, Idol contestants, Will Young, Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Katy Perry, Christina Aguilera, Carrie Underwood, Janet Jackson, Pink... the list would fill this page. Her honors including a Grammy and an Ivor Novello Award.

Comments: 2

  • Mark from CaliforniaCathy Dennis' "Touch Me (All Night Long)" peaked at #2 on Billboard's Hot 100 for two weeks, 18 and 25 May 1991; the #1 record for the former week was Hi-Five's "I Like the Way (The Kissing Game)" and the #1 record for the latter week was Mariah Carey's "I Don't Wanna Cry".
  • John Poole from Ardmore, PaCathy Dennis's 1991 Too Many Walls seemed to hint at transgressive erotic attraction. Today it is almost a mandatory trait for being "normal" . Quite an odd social change in 25 years.
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