What do red leather pants, bandanas and high-energy rock shows have to do with space helmets and electronic dance music? Apparently, if you’re multi-platinum Canadian icons Loverboy, a great deal.
The band, which formed more than 30 years ago in Calgary, Alberta, and have gone on to have such hits as “Working for the Weekend,” “Hot Girls in Love” and “This Could be the Night” are seeing a surge in online streaming requests for their four-million-selling 1981 album, Get Lucky, which just happens to share the same name as French electronica duo Daft Punk’s smash single.
The Loverboy album is now among the leaders in Spotify searches for Get Lucky, and the band is, to quote one of their numerous hit single’s, “Lovin’ Every Minute of It.”
One fan, Anna Hecht, blogged before a recent show at the Sonoma-Marin Fair, “Someone asked me, have you heard ‘Get Lucky’? And I was all, ‘Yeah, it’s flippin’ awesome! Loverboy rules!’ But they said, ‘No, I mean the new Daft Punk song.’”
Soundrop, one of the most popular Spotify apps, noted the flurry of online activity for the seminal Loverboy album. “We’ve seen Loverboy’s hits played more and more in our ‘Love the ’80s’ room, and traffic to the Loverboy room has increased,” said Thomas Ford, vice president of marketing for Soundrop. “There’s no question the attention from the Daft Punk single has led some fans to the band’s album, which just proves the enduring appeal of the record some three decades later.”
The band, which still boasts original members lead singer Mike Reno, guitarist Paul Dean, keyboardist Doug Johnson and drummer Matt Frenette, with Ken “Spider” Sinnaeve replacing the late Scott Smith on bass, have a crowded schedule of tour dates on tap for the summer, including a headlining hometown show at the PNE Arena in Vancouver, BC, on September 2, as well as shows with Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Ratt and Creedence Clearwater Revisited. The slate comes on the heels of the band’s critically acclaimed tour last year with Journey and Pat Benatar + Neil Giraldo.
Added Loverboy founder/lead guitarist Paul Dean, “I don’t mind how they find out about us. Maybe we ‘Got Lucky’ back in the day, but it takes more than luck to survive this long. Hey, we’re just a bunch of daft punk-rockers ourselves.”
Here’s vintage look at the members of Loverboy debating their 1981 title “Get Lucky”: