Songoftheday 2/23/18 - Sitting in my class, just drifting away, staring into the windows of the world...
from the album Inner Child (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: # 2 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 21
Today's song of the day comes from singer Shanice Wilson, who came out in 1987 with her debut album on A&M Records and landed a top ten R&B hit with the Janet Jackson-esque "(Baby Tell Me) Can You Dance" which reached the halfway point on Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart in the winter of 1987. After a second single, "No 1/2 Steppin'", also reached #6 on the R&B chart, and a third, the ballad "The Way You Love Me", becoming a minor R&B hit at #53, Shanice left for Motown, and leaving her last name behind in the process. At the end of 1988, she recorded a collaboration with the soul vocal group Kiara and the result, "This Time", spent a week at #2 on the R&B chart. While that track only made it to #79 on the pop chart, its success did set her up for her switch to Motown and a chance in her sound for her second album Inner Child. The first single from the record was a breezy love ode, "I Love Your Smile", which she wrote with producer Narada Michael Walden along with Jarvis Baker and Sylvester Jackson, and with a light new-jack-swing meets Soul II Soul-inspired beat, she captured the hearts and mouths of mainstream America, who rewarded her with her biggest hit. And that rap to break interlude is simply genius...
"I Love Your Smile" became Shanice's first top ten pop hit, spending three weeks in the runner-up position in February of 1992. The song topped Billboard's R&B chart for a full month, and even crossed over to their adult contemporary (or "easy listening") radio tally for a single week at #50. Internationally, the record reached the top ten in the UK (#2), Canada (#2), Germany (#2), Norway (#2), Switzerland (#3), Sweden (#4), The Netherlands (#4), Belgium (#5), Austria (#6), New Zealand (#6), France (#7), Australia (#8), Ireland (#8), and Spain (#9). "I Love Your Smile" was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1993 for Best Female R&B Vocal, and was the biggest hit of the five, but lost out to Chaka Khan's The Woman I Am album.
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Here's Shanice rocking the house down at Live At The Apollo. Aw, that intro...
and again with a live band on MTV's R&B Unplugged show in 1992...
and finally, Shanice appearing live on a morning show in L.A. in 2017...
Up tomorrow: Irish rockers recall a girl with some peculiar patterns.
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