Songoftheday 1/15/19 - In a restless world like this is, love is ended before it's begun...
from the albums Sleepless In Seattle (Original Soundtrack), The Colour Of My Love (Celine Dion), and Clive Griffin (all 1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7
Today's song of the day comes from Canadian singer Celine Dion, whose eponymous second English-language album in 1992 had pushed her into a bigger profile in America, scoring four top-40 pop hits with "Love Can Move Mountains", "Nothing Broken But My Heart", "If You Asked Me To", and the Grammy-winning title song from Disney's animated film Beauty And The Beast. The following year, in anticipation of her next album The Colour Of My Love, Dion again released a duet from a movie, this time pairing her with a relative newcomer. Clive Griffin, a pop singer from England, had scored his first UK minor hit in 1988 when his second single "Don't Make Me Wait". a bright and shiny song in the Rick Astley lane, notched a week at #99. He continued to rack up minor hits from his first two albums, with the most successful, "I'll Be Waiting", reaching #56 on the British chart (though that song peaked at #20 in Italy). By the way, fans of Stock, Aitken, Waterman-style pop should really search these two albums (Step By Step and Inside Out) out.
So with the hopes of breaking Griffin out internationally, he was recruited to cover the classic "When I Fall In Love" with Celine for the soundtrack to the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie Sleepless In Seattle. Coincidentally, Astley, whose voice Griffin sounds close to, had just had a big hit in Britain with the song, going to #2 on the British charts in 1987. The original, best known from the version from Nat "King" Cole, who included it on his Love Is The Thing album in 1957, though it wasn't released as a single in the U.S. (in England, it was and went to #2). Dion and Griffin's remake doesn't stray too far from the mold, but it didn't have to, for the beloved ballad really has no flaws to begin with, but to be sure, as pleasant as Griffin's voice is, this is definitely Celine's show here...
While Dion and Griffin's "When I Fall In Love" didn't end up as big as "Beauty & The Beast" was, it was a respectable success, reaching the pop Top-40 in September of 1993. The remake was even biggest on "easy listening" radio, making it to #6 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary radio format chart. Internationally, the single made the top-40 in Canada (#21), New Zealand (#22), and the Netherlands (#37), though surprisingly it failed to get on to the British chart at all. At the Grammy Awards in 1994, their recording won the prize for Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists, and was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Recording, which Celine won the year before with "Beauty" and this time went to "A Whole New World" from Disney's Aladdin.
As for kickstarting Griffin's career, he released a self-titled album including "When I Fall In Love", with solo single "Commitment Of The Heart" managing to slip on to the pop Hot 100 at #96 (though it did get to #38 on the Adult Contemporary list). In 1998, he returned to the British chart as the featured singer on a remake of the house music classic "You're The One For Me" from dance act Preluxe, which popped on for a week at #90. As for Celine, she would go on to claim her first American #1 pop hit (coming soon).
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's Celine and Clive appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1993...
They also went on Arsenio Hall, with an interview with Celine, which I can't get enough of her...
This is a wonderful clip of Celine with another Canadian legend, Anne Murray, in 1998...
Besides the Dion/Griffin version of "When I Fall In Love", four other acts reached Billboard's Hot 100 with the song, the biggest being the vocal group the Lettermen, who peaked at #7 in 1962...
Though ten years earlier, Doris Day had the first success with the it, reaching #20 on the pre-rock era Billboard chart...
But truly, nothing could compare with Nat "King" Cole's iconic recording from 1957, where it was the opening song on his #1 album Love Is The Thing...
Finally, I bring it back to Celine and Clive on her Colour Of My Love tour in 1994...
Up tomorrow: Rapper says you're a bit extra-ordinary.
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