Pepper from Cape Coral FloridaTo my handsome Matthew who I am missing so much tonite and cant wait until he can come home.

In the UK, that was exactly the case, as the song made #1 and was the biggest-selling single of 1990. If these two figures had been added together, a song two decades old would have been the #1 song of the year.

Since the charts are based on radio airplay (only the original version) and record sales (only the Curb release), both versions landed in the Top 20 at the same time. Meanwhile the Righteous Brothers, who weren't making a dime off of the original any more, decided to re-record the song and release it on Curb, Bill Medley's current label. When the re-release became a hit, the label that now owned the distribution rights underestimated it's popularity and the few copies that record stores had sold out quickly, with back orders that went into several weeks. For eight weeks, both versions were in the Hot 100 simultaneously. Two versions charted in the US that year: a reissue of the 1965 original Righteous Brothers single was available only as a 45 RPM single, peaking at #13, and a 1990 re-recording of the song was available only as a cassette single, peaking at #19. This returned to both the US and UK charts in 1990 after it was included in the motion picture Ghost (it was used in a scene featuring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and pottery). It was put on the B side of a Phil Spector single 'Hung On You' and the minute it was released 'Unchained Melody' just went through the roof.' 'Unchained Melody' was never intended to be the single. But it's obviously not a Spector production. And so that's how that happened and that's how I produced 'Unchained Melody,' which Phil Spector apparently now takes credit for.

So he was going to do the singles and I would do the album. Then when we went with Phil, Phil asked me if I would produce the albums because it was too time consuming for him to produce the entire albums. I mean I produced 'Little Latin Lupe Lu,' 'My Babe' and all that stuff. In a 2007 statement to the Forgotten Hits newsletter, Medley said: 'You have to remember that I was producing our stuff before Phil Spector. Spector, known for his 'Wall Of Sound' technique, did not produce this - Bill Medley did. This was released on Philles Records, Phil Spector's label.

Marking Melody by R.E. Butler