Songoftheday 10/4/18 - I will love you anyway even if you cannot stay, I think you are the one for me here is where you want to be...
from the album What's The 411? (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (five weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9
Today's song of the day comes from R&B singer Mary J. Blige, who had broken big on to the American music scene with her debut album What's The 411?, which had already scored a pair of top-40 pop hits with "You Remind Me" and the top-5 hit "Real Love". Another song from the album, "Reminisce", reached the top ten on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, while the title track "What's The 411?" slipped on to the R&B Airplay list at #42. The fourth single released from the album was a cover of a soul classic from the 70s. "Sweet Thing", written by Chaka Khan and Tony Maiden from the group Rufus, originally was released in 1975, the midtempo love ballad was their third top ten pop hit and second to reach #1 on the R&B chart...
Mary's version didn't stray far from the original, even including the keyboard flourishes that gave the record so much flavor...
Blige's take of "Sweet Thing" became her third top-40 pop hit in February of 1993. The song rose to #11 on Billboard's R&B chart. Internationally, the song peaked at #21 in Canada, and it was also a minor hit in New Zealand at #48. Her next single, the smooth new jack of "Love No Limit", just missed the pop top-40 at #44, while doing even better than "Sweet Thing" on the R&B list at #5. That was followed by "I Don't Want To Do Anything", a duet with K-Ci of the group Jodeci, which hit #86 on the R&B chart. Then came a song she contributed to the hip-hop comedy movie Who's The Man, "You Don't Have To Worry", which put her back on the pop chart at #63, and almost made the top ten on the R&B tally at #11. (It also appeared on the What's the 411 remix album.) Finally, the song "My Love" got to #23 on the R&B chart, making it eight songs from her debut reaching the chart.
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Here's Mary performing the song on the Uptown Records edition of MTV Unplugged in 1993...
And Mary singing along with Chaka live for TV...
Up tomorrow: The King of Pop does some geological medicine?
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