Songoftheday 2/22/19 - I know I may have made mistakes before, but now I understand what those mistakes were for...
from the albums Bobby (1992) and Remixes In The Key of B (1993)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: unable to chart
Billboard Hot 100 airplay chart Peak: #32 (two weeks)
Weeks in the airplay top-40: 5
Today's song of the day comes from married pop superstars Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston, who were riding the crest of their careers in the early 1990s, with Bobby's second big album Bobby, while not as huge as his Don't Be Cruel album, it still managed to spin off three top-20 pop hits with "Humpin' Around", "Good Enough", and "Get Away". And Whitney was coming off the biggest hit of her career with The Bodyguard movie and soundtrack. So it seemed like a natural home-run to have a collaboration between the two of them, which did come to pass on the Bobby album. "Something In Common", written by the pair with producer Teddy Riley, Riley's Blackstreet bandmate Mark Middleton, writer Bernard Belle, and Alfred Rosemond, was a bubbly midtempo love-fest between the two, though given the tabloid stories seems way overcompensating. However, the fans and radio didn't seem to mind, as the album track, not released as a single in the U.S., entered the R&B airplay chart only a month after "Humpin' Around" arrived, and proceeded to spent 42 weeks on that list, peaking at #30. On the pop side, the song crossed over to the pop airplay list in the fall of 1993...
"Something In Common" became the fourth big hit from Bobby in November of 1993. Internationally, it was released as a physical single, where it climbed to #16 in the UK, while also hitting the top-40 in Canada (#26), New Zealand (#33) and the Netherlands (#40). Meanwhile, around that time another song from Bobby, "That's The Way Love Is", was released as a physical single everywhere, where it reached #57 on the American pop chart and #9 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine (it also was a minor British hit at #56). Lastly, as Bobby released his Remixes In The Key Of B album, another track, "Two Can Play That Game", ended up becoming Brown's highest-charting solo hit at #3, while also hitting the top ten in Italy (#4), the Netherlands (#5), and Ireland (#7), thanks to a slammin' house music remix from K-Klass.
After this success, though, Brown's musical career started falling apart. Aside from a successful reunion with New Edition, a failed partnership with soon-to-be-deceased rapper 2Pac ended up sidelining Brown until 1997, when he returned with his Forever album. Deep into his drug addiction, the result was a mess, with no big names involved, and despite single "Feelin' Inside" just about reaching the top-40 in the UK at #40, the song (not released in America as a physical single) only managed to hit #42 on Billboard's R&B airplay list, missing the pop charts altogether.
As the millenium came, the closest Bobby got to a "hit" was coming a couple notches from reaching the top-40 as a featured singer on rapper Ja Rule's "Thug Lovin'" single in 2002, and squeaky by that mark in 2006 as he hit #39 in the UK as a guest on Damian Marley's "Beautiful". But by that time all the wheels were off the train, as Whitney left and divorced him by the following year. His most recent album, The Masterpiece, came out in 2012, spinning no hits and stalling at #41 on Billboard's R&B album sales chart. But he did outlive Whitney, who would pass away from an overdose in 2012.
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Here's the pair appearing on I believe the Soul Train Music Awards in 1993...
And lastly, he showed up onstage on her tour in Brazil in 1994....
Up tomorrow: Smooth soul singer is totally honest.
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