Starland Vocal Band is an American rock band, known primarily for " Afternoon Delight", one of the biggest singles in 1976 (see 1976 in music). The group began as Fat City, a husband/wife duo of Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert. Nivert and Danoff wrote "I Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado" and " Take Me Home, Country Roads", both big hits for John Denver. The latter song is the de facto state song of West Virginia, although it has no official status as such. Danoff also worked with Emmylou Harris coauthoring " Boulder to Birmingham", one of Harris' better known compositions with her. Danoff and Nivert recorded several albums before making a group called the Starland Vocal Band.
Their debut was the self-titled Starland Vocal Band, which included "Afternoon Delight". The song was a hit, reaching #1 and the album also charted. They were nominated for five Grammy Awards and won two - Best arrangement (voices) and Best New Act. The follow-up, Rear View Mirror was a failure in comparison, although it was a minor chart entry, spending 13 weeks on the Billboard 200 (reaching a peak of #104).
The band hosted a self-titled variety show that ran on CBS for six weeks in the summer of 1977. David Letterman, then unknown, also participated in the show, as did Mark Russell, Jeff Altman, and Proctor and Bergman.
The band broke up by the early 1980s, unable to match their previous success (see 1980s in music). Danoff and Nivert divorced shortly afterwards.
In the 1990s and 2000s, " Afternoon Delight" was featured in several film and television shows, albeit often in an ironic sense, such as Good Will Hunting, Boogie Nights, Arrested Development, and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. In The Simpsons, Homer Simpson has a Starland Vocal Band tattoo on his arm, but is not impressed by it.
