(June 1, 2025). For years, until very recently, Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra” was the first tune that played whenever my iTunes library was activated by my car stereo, simply because it came first alphabetically (maybe some of you readers faced that same dilemma?).
But I was today years old when I discovered which music legend inspired this 43-year-old No. 1 smash — the last of three for Steve Miller’s group and his last top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
It was none other than “The Boss,” Diana Ross, the Motown icon whose own No. 1 smash from exactly two years earlier had no connection to “Abracadabra” but had some interesting similarities nonetheless.
Miller once told the Dallas Morning News that he had been inspired to write “Abracadabra” after seeing Diana Ross while on a ski trip in Sun Valley. He told the outlet, “One day I was out skiing in Sun Valley and, lo and behold, who did I see on the mountain but Diana Ross! I skied down off the mountain to go have lunch. I had played with Diana Ross and the Supremes on “Hullabaloo” [the variety tv show] in the ’60s, and I started thinking about the Supremes and I wrote the lyrics to ‘Abracadabra’ in 15 minutes.”
It’s unclear exactly what about the Supremes evoked the synthy, upbeat tune or lyrics like “I heat up, I can’t cool down… you got me spinning ‘round and ‘round.” Or the hook “Abra-abra-cadabra, I wanna reach out and grab ya.” But there were some interesting parallels between “Abracadabra” and Ross’ last solo No. 1, “Upside Down,” that might shed some light and certainly bear exploring.
First are those lyrics. The directional phrase “Round and round” is a key part of the refrain for both songs. In “Upside Down,” Ross and her background singers — primarily the members of the ‘70s disco group Chic — utter the phrase during each chorus and the euphoric chant that opens and closes the song, for a total of fifteen times.
Likewise, “round and round” is the most repeated phrase in Miller’s “Abracadabra” — appearing nine times throughout that song’s verses and outro.
“Abracadabra” was released in May 1982 and made its Hot 100 debut on the chart dated May 29, exactly two years and one week after the album containing “Upside Down” — diana — was released.
Both songs also faced backlash from within the companies that released them. Miller’s label, Capitol Records, was reluctant to release “Abracadabra,” fearing it would bomb in the U.S. The California rocker had a different deal with Phonogram overseas and it wasn’t until after it became a huge smash in Europe that Capitol relented and released the single in America.
The folks at Motown — and Ross herself — had a similar initial reaction to “Upside Down” and all the tracks on diana, which the singer and label thought would kill her career on first listen to Chic’s original mixes. It wasn’t until Ross and in-house engineer Russ Terrano went back into the studio to remix each track and re-record the singer’s vocals that the album received the green light from Motown’s brass.
The ensuing legal wrangling between Chic’s Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards and Motown resulted in further delays and “Upside Down” wasn’t released as the album’s lead single until June 18, 1980, an unusually long four weeks after the album had already hit stores. This was also exactly two years to the week before “Abracadabra” climbed into the Billboard top 40 for the first time.
From there the similarities become even more striking. Both songs climbed to No. 1 on the Hot 100 during the first week of September of their respective years and both would spend their final week at the top during the last week in September. Diana’s were four consecutive weeks while Miller’s were interrupted for two weeks by Chicago’s “Hard to Say I’m Sorry.”
Both songs also tallied fourteen weeks in the top ten — an unusually long period for the era. “Abracadabra” would become Steve Miller Band’s biggest hit, “Upside Down” Ross’ biggest solo recording. In 2018, both songs wound up in Billboard’s 60th anniversary all-time Hot 100 ranking, with “Upside Down” at No. 80 and “Abracadabra” at No. 90. “Abracadabra” even managed to reach the top 30 of the Billboard Soul Chart, an unlikely feat for a rocker and his only entry there (perhaps an attempt to capitalize on the magic his muse created there so many times before).
Ultimately, whether Miller was conjuring memories of Diana Ross, the Supremes, or just riding the ‘80s synth-pop wave, “Abracadabra” cast a spell that endured. And while the connection to Ross may seem like little more than a musical coincidence wrapped in nostalgia, it’s one more reminder that pop music — like magic — is often about timing, inspiration, and the occasional unexpected spark. Maybe the real trick is how two totally different artists delivered such parallel hits, exactly two years apart, that still leave us spinning round and round today.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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As usual, another brilliant telling of music history. Don’t know how you find the time to do it, it please don’t stop!
Haha. Thanks, Ron. I wrote this while on a plane to Florida for another oversight board. How’s retirement?