"Lost in Emotion" is a song by urban contemporary band

Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam were an urban contemporary band and one of the first freestyle music groups to emerge from New York City in the 1980s. Cult Jam consisted of vocalist Lisa Lisa (born Lisa Valez), guitarist/bassist Alex "Spanador" Moseley, a ...

that appeared on their 1987 album ''

Spanish Fly The Spanish fly (''Lytta vesicatoria'') is an aposematic emerald-green beetle in the blister beetle family (Meloidae). It is distributed across Eurasia. The species and others in its family were used in traditional apothecary preparations ...

''. The song hit number one on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 on October 17, 1987. The song was their second number-one single (having scored this first earlier in the year with "

Head to Toe "Head to Toe" is a song recorded by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam that appeared on their 1987 album ''Spanish Fly''. The song hit number one on three charts: ''Billboard'' Hot 100 on June 20, 1987, the Hot Black Singles charts on May 30 of that year, ...

"). The song also went to number one on the Black Singles chart, and number eight on the dance chart.

Full Force Full Force is an American music group of hip hop and R&B singers and producers from Brooklyn, New York. Members *B-Fine (Brian George) - drums and drum programming, backing vocals *Shy Shy (Hugh Junior Clark) - bass guitar, backing vocals ...

member Lou George describes "Lost in Emotion" as "a combination" of two

Mary Wells Mary Esther Wells (May 13, 1943 – July 26, 1992) was an American singer, who helped to define the emerging sound of Motown in the early 1960s. Along with The Supremes, The Miracles, The Temptations, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and the F ...

' hits: " Two Lovers" and "

You Beat Me to the Punch "You Beat Me to the Punch" is a soul single by Motown singer Mary Wells, released on the Motown label in 1962. It was co-written by Smokey Robinson of the Miracles, who was responsible for the majority of hits released by Wells - and another Mir ...

", an idea which occurred to George as the result of his playing Wells' ''Greatest Hits'' album on which "Two Lovers" and "You Beat Me to the Punch" were sequential tracks. George - "We didn't steal the riffs: all we did was get the flavoring...We

sed sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...

a xylophone and some bells because back in the Motown days they always used those simple instruments."

Video

The video for the song was filmed at the 116th Street Festival in Harlem. With the exception of the group dance routine, the video has an unstructured, almost unrehearsed feel. This was done intentionally for the carnival setting. In a 2020 interview with NJArts.net, Lisa Lisa recalled telling the director, “Look, just have the camera follow us and we’re going to have fun with this.”

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

1987 singles Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles Cashbox number-one singles Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam songs Song recordings produced by Full Force {{1980s-pop-song-stub