Songoftheday 1/20/19 - If I listened long enough to you I'd find a way to believe that it's all true...
from the album Unplugged...and Seated (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12
Today's song of the day comes from Rod Stewart, who had landed a top ten pop hit in the summer of 1993 with a cover of Van Morrison's sweet love ballad "Have I Told You Lately". That hit was recorded live on Rod's appearance on MTV's Unplugged program, which was translated into a live album of the event, which featured Rolling Stone member and Rod's old Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood. Another album cut, "Cut Across Shorty", which Stewart originally recorded in 1970, made it to #16 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Rock radio chart. The second physical single pulled from the record would be another song Rod's done before. "Reason To Believe" was written by folk-rock singer/songwriter Tim Hardin, who included it on his first album Tim Hardin 1 in 1966. Even though the title seemed to imply a philosophical theme, the song is simply about a girl who fucked him over and how he is trying to trust again...
Rod recorded "Reason To Believe" for his watermark album Every Picture Tells A Story. It was released as a single in 1971, where it climbed to #62, but soon the "B-Side" of the 7 inch single, "Maggie May" overshadowed this track, eventually going all the way to #1...
So when Stewart reunited with Wood for the Unplugged set, it made sense to take on "Reason To Believe" again, since Wood played on Every Picture and now the song can get its due without the burden of "Maggie May" on its shoulders...
I still can't get over "me wife was only 1"...
Rod's Unplugged version of "Reason To Believe" far outdid his original, becoming his second top-40 hit from the record in October of 1993. The song did even better on "easy listening" radio, spending a week at #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary format chart. Internationally the 1993 live single spent three weeks at #3 in Canada, but in his own homeland, it stalled right under the halfway mark on the British singles chart at #51 (the original with "Maggie May" was a double-sided #1 hit in 1971), while also being a minor hit in Germany at #79.
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Before Rod recorded his version in 1971, probably the best known cover was from the Carpenters, who put it on their sophomore album Close To You, which went to #2 on Billboard's albums chart...
Speaking of carpenters, singer Bobby Darin recorded "Reason To Believe" for his folksy If I Were A Carpenter album in 1966...
Cher included the song in her little-remembers covers album Backstage in 1968...
One of the prettiest versions of the song happened when Glen Campbell sang it on his classic Wichita Lineman album that same year...
In 1993, the most recent cover of the song before Rod's was from Wilson Phillips on their own debut album in 1990...
And I'm going to leave you back with Rod the Mod in concert at London's Royal Albert Hall in 2004...
Up tomorrow: A soulful pair has a turntable request.
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