Song of the Day 6/18: Arrow, “Hot Hot Hot”

The heat dome that had monkeys falling dead from the trees in Mexico is headed our way. Delaware is expected to dodge the worst of it – places in the upper Midwest and Northeast could see temperatures 25 degrees above normal – but highs are predicted to hit 90 and above most days for the next week.

You’ve heard this song thousands of times, mostly in commercials for any product with a summer sale, but this is the original. Alphonsus Cassell, stage name Arrow, was a musician from the island of Montserrat. His first records, from the early and mid-’70s, were calypso, but by the ’80s he was performing an offshoot of calypso known as soca. “Hot Hot Hot,” released in 1982, became the genre’s biggest hit when it reached the British singles chart in 1984, and again when remixed in 1994.

You might identify the song with David Johansen’s alter-ego, Buster Poindexter, who had a No. 11 dance club hit with it in 1987. On tour in the Caribbean, he said, “we heard that everywhere for a week, and I thought, ‘That’s a cool song, let’s play that when we get home’.” Its popularity led him to later call it the bane of his existence, because it wasn’t representative of the music he performed as Poindexter. The video features Bill Murray; the next year, Johansen appeared as the Ghost of Christmas Past in Murray’s holiday hit, “Scrooged.”