Robbed hit of the week 9/21/15 - Anita Baker's "No One In The World"...

"No One In The World" - Anita Baker
from the album Rapture (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44

This week's "robbed hit" comes from jazz-soul singer Anita Baker, whose breakthrough album Rapture had rewarded her with a top-10 pop hit with "Sweet Love" and a top-40 follow-up in "Caught Up In The Rapture". The third single, the breezy "Same Ole Love (365 Days a Year)", missed that level by a couple of notches. For the fourth release from the album she went with the set's "showstopper", "No One In The World", which was recorded by Dionne Warwick a year prior for her Finders Of Lost Loves album (though the song never made the charts). Written by Ken Hirsch and Marti Sharron and produced by the latter with Gary Skardina, the song hit all the "torch ballad" notes ending in an emotional crescendo that still puts me in tears...

While "No One In The World" reached the top-10 on both Billboard R&B (#5) and Adult Contemporary (#9) charts, like "Same Ole Love", it also stopped short of the pop top-40 at the same mark (#44) in October of 1987.

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Here's Dionne Warwick's original, which depending on the day and time I prefer at moments to Anita's (she also re-recorded the song for her 1987 album Reservations For Two produced by Barry Manilow)...

..and here's Anita performing the song live, and THIS is how you do it, no need for earpieces or nothin'....