Venus (Frankie Avalon song)

"Venus" is a song written by Ed Marshall. The most successful and best-known recording of the track was by Frankie Avalon and released in 1959, when it reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

Background
"Venus" became Avalon's first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it spent five weeks atop the survey. The song also reached No. 10 on the R&B chart. The lyrics detail a man's plea to Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, to send him a girl to love and one who will love him as well. Billboard ranked it as the No. 4 song for 1959.

The song was covered in the United Kingdom by Dickie Valentine, and it spent a week at No. 20 in the Singles Chart in May 1959, the week before Frankie Avalon reached the Top 20 with his original version.

In 1976, Avalon released a new disco version of "Venus". That helped revive the singer's career, because it had been waning prior to its release, but it was Avalon's last Billboard Hot 100 hit. The re-recording of "Venus" peaked at No. 46 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and at No. 1 on the Easy Listening chart. Avalon was quoted as saying of the remake: "It was all right, but I still prefer the original."

Other charting versions

 * Johnny Mathis reached No. 23 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart "bubbled under" the Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. 111.
 * Jamie Redfern in 1973 entered the Go-Set - Australian charts at No. 27.

In popular culture
Avalon's recording of the song was used a number of times in the Showtime series Dexter, it being the favourite song of Arthur Mitchell's sister Vera.

"Venus" was also featured in Cranium Command (1989–2005), an attraction at Epcot's Wonders of Life Pavilion (now closed) at Walt Disney World. In the attraction, a 12-year-old boy named Bobby (Scott Curtis), tries to survive the pressures of life and falls in love with a beautiful girl named Annie (Natalie Gregory) at school.