Robbed hit of the week 11/19/18 - Restless Heart and Warren Hill's "Tell Me What You Dream"...
from the album Big Iron Horses (re-release) (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #43
This week's "robbed hit" comes from the country crossover band Restless Heart, who had been one of the very few bands (well, just Alabama mostly) that were able to get played by mainstream radio and make the pop charts in a significant way, scoring their first top-40 hit in the summer of 1987 with "I'll Still Be Loving You", and then returned in the beginning of 1993 with "When She Cries". But by the time of that second success, lead singer Larry Stewart had already left the group, with keyboardist Dave Innis departing soon after it. The remaining members - drummer John Dittrich, guitarist Greg Jennings, and bass player Paul Gregg - continued on, and while they were still promoting songs to country radio from their 1992 album Big Iron Horses (with also had Innis), the trio recorded a single with saxophone player Warren Hill, which was specifically targeted for the soft pop market. "Tell Me What You Dream" was written by former member of the Eagles Timothy B. Schmit along with producer Josh Leo and Vince Malamed. The song was a cut on Schmit's first solo album, Playin' It Cool, in 1984, but ten years later Leo, who was producing Restless Heart's album, brought the song to them, having Dittrich sing lead. Hill, who was signed by the label to try to capture the pop-jazz market Kenny G had profited from quite nicely, was named as a featured artist to jump start his own career and get name recognition. What resulted is a song sounding so 1984 being covered by a country act, whose genre is typically years behind the pop times...
While "Tell Me What You Dream" exceeded expectations on "easy listening" radio, spending two weeks at #1 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary format chart, the single missed the pop Top-40 by only a couple of notches in May of 1993. Internationally, the single did much better in Canada, rising to #14. It did get enough notice to have their album Big Iron Horses re-issued with the song slapped on. As for Hill, while this song was climbing the Adult Contemporary chart, his own instrumental "The Passion Theme", from the Madonna clunker Body Of Evidence (the one "Live To Tell" tried to promote), entered that list, but only climbed to 33. And since for some reason "Tell Me What You Dream" wasn't on his own album from that year, Devotion, he was pretty much left behind after it peaked. He's had a respectable career in the jazz field since, with a few of his albums reaching the top ten, and track "La Dolce Vita" hitting the Smooth Jazz radio chart at #2 in 2008, but nothing remotely approaching Kenny G level.
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And here's the original from songwriter Timothy B. Schmit's Playin' It Cool album...
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