Their time in the music spotlight seemed to have vanished. But Captain & Tennille proved more resilient than anyone might have imagined. They found a home at the top of the charts again with a song that deviated from their previous formula.
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“Do That To Me One More Time” found its place within the sensuous soft pop genre that was all the rage at the end of the 70s. Which means Captain & Tennille found a way to carve out their own little unexpected Yacht Rock niche.
Dynamic Duo
The Captain was Daryl Dragon. Because he wore a yachting cap and played keyboards, his buddies in The Beach Boys called him “Captain Keyboard”. Tennille was Toni Tennille. She was trying to make her name as a singer and songwriter in the early 70s.
They hooked up professionally when Dragon got a gig playing in a stage show that was written by Tennille. Soon, they were performing together in local clubs in Los Angeles as Captain and Tennille. They also became more than a musical partnership, marrying in 1975.
That same year, their cover of Neil Sedaka’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” topped the US charts as the pair’s first single. A string of similarly bubbly, mostly cover-song hits followed, and this unlikely pair attained stardom. They even earned their own variety show on network television for a while.\
Changing Course
Just as soon as Captain & Tennille rose to the top, so too did they quickly plummet back down to Earth. In an effort to change things up, they signed with Casablanca Records, a label with a wide range of artists running the gamut from Donna Summer to Kiss. The husband-wife team would have one last shot at relevance, and they made the most of it.
When they submitted “Do That To Me One More Time”, written by Tennille, to the label, they didn’t expect much of a response. But Casablanca’s head, Neil Bogart, recognized how well the song fit into the musical culture of 1978. He was right, as the track shot all the way to No. 1.
Captain & Tennille couldn’t sustain their comeback. “Do That To Me One More Time” proved to be the last of their big radio smashes. After 1982, they essentially became a live act only, releasing just one more album of original material in their career. They divorced in 2014, and Dragon died in 2019, with Tennille at his bedside.
The Lyrical Meaning of “Do That To Me One More Time”
It’s fair to classify “Do That To Me One More Time” as a boudoir song. Without specifying, the narrator wants her male counterpart to double up, shall we say, on what he’s just done. “Do that to me one more time/Once is never enough for a man like you.”
Sweet nothings also enchant her, to the point that she wants to hear them again. “Pass that by me one more time,” Tennille sings. “Once just isn’t enough for my heart to hear.” “Kiss me just like you did,” she pleads. There’s not much to the lyrics beyond that, but Tennille’s bedroom vocals get the point across just fine.
To the public’s credit, they were willing to accept Captain & Tennille in a slightly different style than the one they had previously perpetuated. As such, “Do That To Me One More Time” displays Yacht Rock’s willingness to give second chances.
Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns
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