Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra

"Abracadabra" is a song by American rock group Steve Miller Band, written by Steve Miller. The song was released as the first single from the 1982 album of the same name the same year. The song is said to have been inspired by the American singer Diana Ross, whom Miller had met when they each performed on the same episode of the pop music television show Hullabaloo in the 1960s. The lyrics "Round and round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows" are a reference to the spinning wheel segment from The Original Amateur Hour. Speaking on The Howard Stern Show in June 2016, Miller said at first his record company Capitol Records did not see the potential hit it would become. "Capitol didn't believe in it and didn't want to release it. I had a different deal with Phonogram in Europe. When it came out in Europe, I cancelled my American tour because it was No. 1 everywhere in the world, except the States." After seeing its success overseas, Capitol released it in the U.S. and it also climbed to No. 1. The song became a worldwide hit, charting in ten countries and topping the charts in six countries, and has become one of the band's biggest hits, along with "The Joker" and "Rock'n Me". In the U.S., the song was No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two non-consecutive weeks. It was knocked off the top by Chicago's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry", only to return to No. 1 two weeks later. A similar occurrence happened in 1976, when Miller's "Rock'n Me" knocked Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" out of the No. 1 spot. The song also showed substantial longevity, spending fourteen weeks in the top ten of the Hot 100 chart. "Abracadabra" is listed at No. 90 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of all time.