RAY IT AIN'T SO!
Pop legend unrecognisable 39 years after hit Hollywood movie song, Oscars performance and reality TV shock
HE shot to fame after he wrote and performed the theme song to the 1980s movie, Ghostbusters.
Who You Gonna Call? singer Ray Parker Jr looks very different today than he did when the iconic song launched him onto the Oscars stage back in 1985.
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The track topped the US charts for three weeks at the time, and was also performed at the legendary Radio City music hall to close out the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards.
Ray first found fame before Ghostbusters, however, in his band Raydio back in the 70s.
Whey they split in the early 80s, he released five albums between 1981 and 1991.
These spawned several top ten hits including “Jack and Jill”, “You Can’t Change That”, and “A Woman Needs Love (Just Like You Do).
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He has also written songs for the likes of Chaka Khan, the Supremes, Tina Turner, The Carpenters and The Temptations.
Since then, however, Ray has been largely absent from the music scene as a solo star apart from another album in 2006.
In 2014, he was honoured with a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Fans in the States were also thrilled when Ray made an unexpected return to the spotlight last year when he appeared on The Masked Singer USA.
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Ray was unmasked as Sir Bug A Boo, and performed the Ghostbusters theme on the hit series.
Eagle-eyed UK fans might also remember he appeared in a 2009 advert for directory enquiries service 118 118, where he performed a re-worked version of his hit Ghostbusters theme.
Earlier this year, he summed up in the secret to his successful songwriting.
In an interview with Pop Matters, he said: "All of my songs, including 'Ghostbusters' and 'Jack and Jill', are simple songs. Three chords, four chords. Verse, chorus, clever lyric, and that’s it."
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