Songoftheday 10/12/17 - How could you understand the way I feel, how could you relate to so much pain...
from the album I'm Your Baby Tonight (1990)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9
Today's song of the day is from Whitney Houston, whose third album I'm Your Baby Tonight had scored her a pair of #1 pop hits with the title track and "All The Man That I Need". She also reached the top-20 on the Hot 100 in the spring of 1991 with the one-off charity single of her performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" from the Super Bowl. After that, Houston released another ballad from the album, "Miracle", written and produced by Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds and L.A. Reid. Although it was arranged like a warm inspirational song, the lyrics go pretty dark, going from expressing pain to telling oneself to buck up and face it. It still got lots of airplay due to her name, but possibly the vague nature of the words didn't sit right, along with a music video that attempted to send a message, portraying prisoner, women having/fighting for abortions, and poor people, without a clear resolution or offer of one. She had denied it was strictly about a woman who decided to have her baby, but it seems like the lyrics make the most sense that way.
"Nothing should matter
Not when love grows inside you
A voice of love is crying out
Don't throw love away
There's a miracle in store"
"Miracle" became the third top ten pop hit from I'm Your Baby Tonight in June of 1991. The song spent two weeks at #2 on Billboard's R&B chart, while climbing to #4 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. The record made it to #17 in Canada.
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Here's Whitney performing the song live in concert in 1991...
Up tomorrow: A vocal group from New Jersey is going into cardiac arrest.
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