Not my sisters, they never got their big break.
Having some trouble getting the engine running at the start of another week? Well, The Nest has the high octane earworm fuel you need to get all revved up and in drive! We’re at the entrance ramp to Monday, and that means it’s time for us to hook up the cables and jump start another song that got sold for scrap from that vast junkyard of lost hits we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy’s ready to shift her turntable from 33 to 45, while the Sponkies get strapped in to their car seats. Gentlepony, start your records!!!
The Pointer Sisters are one of the most successful girl groups of all time that you won’t find in a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame near you. While they had their biggest run of success in the early 80’s, the group actually began as a duo of Bonnie and June Pointer all the way back in 1969. Anita and Ruth would eventually join the group, with Bonnie dropping out before the sisters got their first taste of commercial success in 1979. That’s when they became one of many artists to take a Bruce Springsteen written song and make it better…
Ooooooh! Fire!
At the height of their success, The Pointer Sisters wound up with seven Top 10 hits (eight if you count this one), though they never topped the #2 peak of “Fire.” Pretty much any of those seven songs would make for a fitting DVA track since the Pointers pretty much got completely swept under the rug by commercial radio once the 80’s were over. But if there’s two songs by the group people still know today, it’s probably “Jump (For My Love)” and “I’m So Excited.” Those both came off the 1983 album, fittingly titled Break Out, though there was one more big hit off that album that got remembered much less, and one that I always liked…
“Automatic” hit #5 in the Spring of 1984 and is the song that first introduced me to The Pointer Sisters. Unlike its sister songs from that album, “Automatic” didn’t have a music video that aired constantly on MTV. I’m not sure where the uploader dredged up that video I embedded above, but I’d never seen it before in my countless thousands of hours of watching 80’s music videos. And it is pretty lame, even by early MTV standards…
And that is really saying something.
Lame video or not, it’s still a great lost song… and you gotta love Ruth Pointer getting down for the how low can your go vocal in “Automatic!”
Don’t be shy, come back next week for another lost hit that will have you so excited!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
love this song… and nelly asks how to get such cool background singers …like yours ?
Be the (cough) “luckiest” brother in the world to have so many sisters….
Go Ruthie! 💃🏼 Can’t listen to the Pointer Sisters without thinking of Axel Foley and the Beverly Hills Cop films. Fun times in the 80’s.
“Neutron Dance” is my absolute favorite of theirs. BHC had four EXCELLENT songs become hits off its soundtrack…. not many other 80’s films not about dancing can compete with that!
Too right you are. 👍🏻
They definitely had something going didn’t they……..don’t really remember this song but SO many others I definitely remember………….
Pam
This song just disappeared after it was a hit and I don’t know why. They definitely had a lot of great songs back in the day, though!
I loved the Pointer Sisters. They did that 1940s sound perfectly — actually better — than anyone before or after.
There definitely weren’t a lot of other groups like them in the 80’s, at least.
I remember that song well. I always assumed there were men in the band because of the deep voices.
That video looks like they really couldn’t be bothered. Their dancing is out of sync and it almost looks like their mouths are too!
I think the group was taken to one of those booths they have at a theme park where you can make your own video by lip synching to your favorite song. But for some reason, they didn’t invite the Pointer Brother along who actually does the singing…