Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: The Doobie Brothers’ Minute by Minute

This week in 1978, Minute by Minute, the eighth studio album from the Doobie Brothers, rose to the pinnacle of the Billboard Top 200. To date, it remains the band’s only #1 album, but the achievement was hardly a surprise to anyone who’d caught the band’s seminal appearance on a very special two-part What’s Happening!! episode – entitled “Doobie or Not Doobie” – only a few months earlier. After all, surely we can all agree that any band capable of holding their own against the formidable trio of Rerun, Roger, and Dwayne was destined to top the charts sooner than later.

Even without such a significant pop culture achievement in their back pocket, though, it’s fair to say that the Doobies probably would made it to #1 with Minute by Minute anyway, given that the album features one of the greatest singles of Michael McDonald’s stint with the band: “What a Fool Believes,” which was a #1 hit in its own right. The song’s been covered by numerous folks over the years, including Aretha Franklin, Matt Bianco, Peter Cox of Go West, M People, and Dionne Warwick, but if you’ve never heard Self’s cover of the song, one which was performed on toy instruments long before Jimmy Fallon and the Roots made it cool to do so, you should remedy that situation immediately by clicking here.

Of course, the title track of Minute by Minute proved pretty darned memorable in its own right, making it to #14 on the charts, and “Dependin’ on You” had solid chart success, too, hitting #24. But, hey, why are we wasting time running through song titles when we can just revisit the album itself?