Songoftheday 2/3/17 - Am i really here in your arms, it's just like i dreamed it would be...
from the album Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind (1989)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #11 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9
Today's song of the day comes from rock "chick" gone adult-pop siren Linda Ronstadt, whose duet with New Orleans soul icon Aaron Neville, "Don't Know Much", had come one notch from reaching the top of the pop chart in America in the winter of 1989. The second single from her Cry Like A Rainstorm... album was also a collaboration with Neville, "All My Life". Written by Karla Bonoff, who had a soft-rock hit of her own back in 1982 with "Personally", the wedding-ready love ballad got all the easy-listening stations on board, even without a video (since MTV wasn't playing that "old" anymore)...
"All My Life" came one spot from reaching the American pop top ten in March of 1990. It did top Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart for three weeks, and earned the pair their second straight Grammy Award for Best Pop Duet/Group Performance in 1991. Internationally, the single went to #10 in Canada, and was a top-40 hit in the Netherlands (#28). It popped on to the British singles chart for a week at #96.
Linda and Aaron had a third single from Cry Like A Rainstorm..., a cover of the Sam & Dave soul classic "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby", which climbed to #5 to the Adult Contemporary chart, and peaked at #78 pop. A fourth release from the album, "Adios", was simply Linda on a sweet Jimmy Webb break-up number which Beach Boys Brian Wilson sang back-up on, and was the fourth top-10 Adult Contemporary hit at #9.
Linda's final top-40 pop hit would be with "All My Life". While Aaron's next album used the exposure from this to have another top-10 hit with "Everybody Plays The Fool", Linda's next two records, the Mexican music sequel Mas Canciones and the Cuban pastiche Frenesi, were Spanish-language affairs, although the later sent two songs to the top ten of Billboard's Latin Songs chart with the title track and "Perfidia". In 1993, she returned to pop music, albeit with more of a new age influence, on Winter Light, and while two singles from it made the AC top-40, "Heartbeats Accelerating" only "bubbled" under the pop chart at #112. Two years later, her Feels Like Home set had minor AC ("Blue Train", #31) and country ("Walk On", #61) hits. She continued to record success albums (including a second Trio album with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris as well as one with Harris alone on the stellar Western Wall). In 1995 she came one slot from reaching the Hot 100 with her cover of the Disney classic "A Wish Is A Dream Your Heart Makes" (#101). Sadly, her voice was silenced from complications from Parkinson's Disease, with her retiring from music in 2011. But her legacy remains intact, with not only getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, but earning both the Grammy Lifetime Achievement award and the Latin Grammy equivalent.
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Karla Bonoff released her version of "All My Life" on her collection bearing that name in 1999...
...and lastly, Linda and Aaron performing the song live...
Up tomorrow: Painted rockers soften things up for an eternal power-ballad.
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