Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: T. Rex, “Hot Love”

44 years ago today, T. Rex ascended to the top of the UK chart with a single that provides a perfect example of how much less popular the band was in America than they were in England.

Not that US listeners didn’t eventually find a little bit of (hot) love for Marc Bolan and company – as music history reveals, “Get It On” provided them with a brief American breakthrough and the lone top-10 single of their career – but to start putting things into perspective, the song spent four weeks atop the UK Singles chart, making it the band’s second most popular single of the year.

As you’ve probably already guessed, “Hot Love,” which featured once and future Turtles vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (a.k.a. Flo & Eddie) on backing vocals, was T. Rex’s biggest hit of 1971 in their native land, spending six – count ‘em – six weeks at #1. Sadly, American listeners just couldn’t find the same level of (hot) love in their hearts: the single topped out at #72 before making a hasty exit from the Billboard Hot 100. Thankfully, the song has found further appreciation on our shores, over the years, at least partially because we tacked it onto our expanded reissue of Electric Warrior, but it’s still kind of amazing that US listeners couldn’t latch onto a song as catchy as “Hot Love” the first time around.