"Music Box Dancer" is an instrumental piece by Canadian musician Frank Mills that was an international hit in the late 1970s. It features an arpeggiated piano theme in C-sharp major (enharmonic to D-flat major) designed to resemble a music box, accompanied by other instruments playing a counterpoint melody as well as a wordless chorus. (Most modern piano music sheets have the song in the key of C major.) Mills wrote and recorded "Music Box Dancer" in 1974, but it did not become a single until December 1978. By Christmas of that year, it was in the top ten of many European and Asian pop music charts. Released as a single in the United States in January 1979, it reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on the week ending May 5, and also reached #3 on the Canadian Adult Contemporary chart and #47 on the Canadian pop chart. The single also did well in Australia, reaching #14 on the Australian Singles Chart (Kent Music Report). A few notes are missing in the third repeated introduction to the main melody, which could not be corrected, as Mills did not have the funds to record another take. History In 1974, Mills released an album that featured "Music Box Dancer", but it was not initially a hit. When he re-signed with Polydor Records Canada in 1978, the label released a new song as a single, with "Music Box Dancer" on the B-side. The single was sent to easy-listening stations in Canada, and one copy was mistakenly sent to CFRA, an Ottawa pop station. The program director played the A-side and could not figure out why it had been sent to his station, so he played the B-side to see if the record label had been mistakenly marked. He liked "Music Box Dancer" and added it to his station's playlist. The song's success at CFRA was swift. "Music Box Dancer" premiered on CFRA's top 30 chart on May 5, 1978; by June 30, it was the #1 song on the station's playlist. "Music Box Dancer" also began picking up play on other Canadian stations around this time, becoming a nationwide hit. Mills's album went gold in Canada, which, after several months, prompted Polydor in the US to release the album and single with the B-side "The Poet and I". The million-selling Gold-certified single reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring