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While You See a Chance
1981 single by Steve Winwood From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"While You See a Chance" is a song performed by Steve Winwood in 1980,[4] written by Winwood and Will Jennings.[5] It was released on his album Arc of a Diver[5] and peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1981[4] and number 68 on the Billboard year-end top 100 for 1981.[6] The song was a bigger hit in Canada, where it peaked at number 3.[7] It also reached number 45 in the UK.
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Background
Winwood co-wrote "While You See a Chance" with Will Jennings, who came up with the song's lyrics. Jennings did not discuss the song's lyrical subject matter with Winwood, who nonetheless decided that the song was suitable to record. He said that he "learned about discipline from Will. He just came up with the lyrics and it was right for me, right for him, and right for the song."[8]
While the song was being mixed, Nobby Clark, who served as an engineer for the recording sessions, accidentally deleted the drum tracks by hitting the "record" feature on the mixing console. Attempts to fully restore the drums were unsuccessful, so Winwood took a Minimoog solo that he had played at the end of the song and repurposed it for the intro.[8]
According to Clark, Winwood determined that the minimoog solo would be a "perfect way to open the song". Clark stated that "the disaster turned into something really memorable. It had been a terrible two weeks trying to patch things up and we ended with pure magic."[8] Winwood played all the instruments on the song.[9] By 1988, the song had received enough airplay to earn Winwood the Million Play award.[8]
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Personnel
- Steve Winwood – lead and backing vocals, acoustic piano, organ, synthesizer, drums, tambourine, congas
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
References
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