Every Little Kiss

"Every Little Kiss"
Single by Bruce Hornsby and the Range
from the album The Way It Is
B-side
  • "The Red Plains" (NA)
  • "The River Runs Low" (EU)
ReleasedMay 1986
Recorded1985
Genre
Length
  • 5:48 (album version)
  • 4:29 (1986 single edit)
  • 5:10 (1987 single remix)
LabelRCA Records
SongwriterBruce Hornsby
Producers
Bruce Hornsby and the Range singles chronology
"Every Little Kiss"
(1986)		 "The Way It Is"
(1986)
Music video
"Every Little Kiss" on YouTube

"Every Little Kiss" is a song recorded by Bruce Hornsby and the Range. It was first released in May 1986 as the lead single from the band's 1986 album The Way It Is. It was re-released as a single after the success of two other singles from the album, and became a Top 20 hit in July 1987.

Background

Bruce's brother John Hornsby recounted that "the premise of this song is how poorer families are broken up when the husband or father has to get a job far away in another town because there are no opportunities at home."[3] He noted that "Bruce came up with this idea in the summer of '85 when there were a lot of stories in the news about steel mills and shipyards shutting down" and that the song's theme is "the basic longing and about how it gets more intense when you have less control over your life thanks to hard economic times".[3]

Like other songs from Hornsby's debut album, "Every Little Kiss" was composed and initially recorded with him on piano accompanied by an Oberheim OB-X analog synthesizer and a LinnDrum drum machine.[4] The introductory solo piano passage of the song quotes "The Alcotts" movement from Charles Ives' Concord Sonata.[5]

Release

The song was originally released by RCA Records as the band's debut single along with the album The Way It Is in early 1986. "Every Little Kiss" entered the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on July 26 at number 93, peaked at number 72 on August 23, and remained in the Hot 100 for a total of nine weeks through September 20, the week that "The Way It Is" debuted. It also hit number 18 on the Album Rock Tracks chart on July 26 and number 37 on the Hot Adult Contemporary chart on August 16.[6] The single version is 4:29 edit of the 5:48 album version.

Following the number one success of "The Way It Is" in December 1986, the band's winning of the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in February 1987 and a Top 10 showing by "Mandolin Rain" in March, RCA decided to re-release "Every Little Kiss". RCA executive vice-president Butch Waugh said "we knew it was a hit to start with" but that "it was just the new-artist syndrome" that held it back when it was initially released.[7] A 5:10 remix of the song was prepared by Los Angeles producer Eddie King for the new single,[a] and the song was chosen by RCA as a test release of the new cassette single format.[8] On May 16, 1987, this version debuted on the Hot 100 at number 61, above its original peak position[9] and proceeded to climb the chart, topping out at number 14 on July 11. The accompanying music video went into heavy rotation on MTV.[10] Its 15-week second run on the singles chart ended on August 22. The song also re-entered the Hot Adult Contemporary chart, reaching number three on July 11 and making it the band's third Top 5 A/C hit.

Reception

A reviewer at the time called the song called it "catchy but traditional,[11] while Billboard declared it "upbeat American rock" and "a Jackson Browne/Bob Seger hybrid".[1] A rock radio programmer for WHJY radio said that it "has a synthesizer that helps me bring my core audience up to 1986",[12] but upon its first release, some radio programmers called it "too country", "too Southern" and "too mellow" for pop radio.[7] Before the single's 1987 re-release, Hornsby himself said the single "sort of set the album up on rock radio, though it didn't cross over into the Hot 100" [sic].[11]

Charts

Chart (1986) Peak
position
Netherlands (Dutch Top 40)[13]32
US Billboard Hot 100 72
US Mainstream Rock Tracks (Billboard) 18
US Adult Contemporary (Billboard) 37
Chart (1987) Peak
position
Canada Top Singles (RPM) 36
Canada Adult Contemporary (RPM) 9
US Billboard Hot 100[14] 14
US Adult Contemporary (Billboard) 3

Notes

  1. ↑ A 4:40 edit of this remix without the piano intro appeared on some European single releases.

References

  1. 1 2 "Bruce Hornsby and the Range: Every Little Kiss". Reviews: Singles. Billboard. Vol. 98, no. 23. 7 June 1986. p. 85.
  2. ↑ Osmon, Erin (28 April 2026). "Appendix: 150 Essential Heartland Rock Songs". Won't Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 293–300. ISBN 978-1-324-05137-4. Retrieved 13 June 2026.
  3. 1 2 "Every Little Kiss". Bruuuce.com. Retrieved 5 June 2026.
  4. ↑ Hornsby, Bruce (14 April 2026). The Bruce Hornsby Interview. Interviewed by Beato, Rick. Event occurs from 16:27 to 18:01. Retrieved 5 June 2026 – via YouTube. The least commercial tape that I ever made is the one that got me signed. And it was one guy playing synth bass, on an OB-X. Oberheim. ... So yeah, LinnDrum. Pattern mode. ...you could program fills. You could program a little a splat, a cymbal to hit on the chords or something. No, no, just I would play [piano] and then I'd nod at the engineer, hit it. ... So those demos I made them in reaction to the way the band I had, the Range, whom I loved. There were certain songs that I'd written where I would come away from having worked it up and played it live with the band, and always think, God I thought this song was better than this. I guess it's not that good. You know I thought it was good and maybe it's not. So I got tired of thinking, feeling that way and I said let me just go try it now that I've got this LinnDrum, and so I did that. So I made a tape thinking no major label have any interest in this. It's still songs with words, but it just didn't feel like anything that was going on at the time.
  5. ↑ "Bruce Hornsby's Modern Classical Moment". NPR. August 23, 2014. Retrieved 5 June 2026. For some reason I was drawn to the 20th-century music. Charles Ives was a huge favorite of mine and still is. In fact, I almost got sued: One of my first singles, "Every Little Kiss," had an intro that was sort of an homage to Ives. I was basically paraphrasing the third movement of his Concord Sonata — it's called "The Alcotts."
  6. ↑ Whitburn, Joel (2002). Top Adult Contemporary: 1961-2001. Record Research. p. 118.
  7. 1 2 DiMartino, Dave (30 May 1987). "4 Score 2nd Time Around On Hot 100" (PDF). Billboard. Vol. 99, no. 22. p. 82. We knew it was a hit to start with," says RCA vice president of promotion Butch Waugh of the Hornsby single. "This record performed at the stations that were playing it. We just couldn't convince anybody else—we'd gone about as far as we could go with the 70 stations that we had. Nobody else was interested in playing it." Why not? "It was just the new-artist syndrome," says Waugh. "We couldn't get people to listen to a new artist. Some of the quotes were too country," 'too Southern,' 'too mellow,' those kind of things. But we came to find out that it was a hit all along.
  8. ↑ Redler, Doug (11 July 1987). "Cassette Singles for Sale" (PDF). Billboard. Vol. 99, no. 28. p. 63.
  9. ↑ Grein, Paul (16 May 1987). "Motown's 'You Keep Me Hangin' On': Once, Twice, Three Times A Top 10 Hit" (PDF). Chart Beat. Billboard. Vol. 99, no. 20. p. 6.
  10. ↑ "Heavy Rotation" (PDF). MTV Programming. Billboard. Vol. 99, no. 26. 27 June 1987. p. 63.
  11. 1 2 Harrington, Richard (3 February 1987). "In Grammy Range: For Hornsby, a Way into the Big Time". Washington Post. Retrieved 5 June 2026.
  12. ↑ Freeman, Kim (12 July 1986). "Album Rock" (PDF). Out of the Box. Billboard. Vol. 98, no. 28. p. 10. WHJY Providence PD Dave Lee Austin...is high on another newcomer, Bruce Hornsby & the Range's "Every Little Kiss" (RCA). "This has a synthesizer that helps me bring my core audience up to 1986. You can play it next to Pink Floyd or ZZ Top," he says.
  13. ↑ "Nederlandse Top 40 – Bruce Hornsby and the Range" (in Dutch). Dutch Top 40.
  14. ↑ "Bruce Hornsby Chart History – Billboard Hot 100". Billboard. July 11, 1987. Retrieved January 8, 2019.
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