Songoftheday 4/18/16 - The scales are sometimes unbalanced and you bear the weight of all that has to be, I hope you see that you can lean on me and together we can calm a stormy sea...

"Giving You The Best That I Got" - Anita Baker
from the album Giving You The Best That I Got (1988)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 15

Today's song of the day comes from jazz/soul singer Anita Baker, who had left the band Chapter 8 for a solo career, and with her landmark album Rapture, her second solo release, scored a top-10 pop hit with "Sweet Love", along with a top-40 follow-up in "Caught Up In The Rapture". In 1988, Anita put out her third effort, Giving You The Best That I Got, which would go on to hit #1 on the albums chart for four weeks, and land her a Grammy in 1990 for Best R&B Female Vocal. The title track also won that same award a year earlier, along with Best R&B Song (it was also nominated for Record and Song of the Year), and became her biggest pop hit to date. Co-written by Baker along with Skip Scarborough (who penned Bill Withers' "Lovely Day") and Randy Holland, it put her back in her wheelhouse of smooth, sophisticated jazz music covered in a love song with just enough uncertainty to bring a twinge of emotion in her voice to make this a perfect/imperfect wedding song...

"Giving You The Best That I Got" went to the top-3 on the American pop chart in December of 1988. The single topped both of Billboard's R&B (two weeks) and Adult Contemporary (one week) charts. Internationally, the single itself didn't translate too well, making the top-40 in New Zealand (#25), but missing the top-40 entirely in the UK and Canada (the album, though, did reach #9 in Britain).

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Here's Anita performing the song at President G.W. Bush's inauguration in 1989...

Up tomorrow: The Fab Five requires no romance.