Songoftheday 5/11/19 - There's a calm surrender to the rush of day, when the heat of a rolling wave can be turned away...
from the album The Lion King (Original Soundtrack) (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 23
Today's song of the day comes from singer/songwriter/pop icon Elton John, who had a kind of career renaissance entering the early 1990s with his album The One. Following troubles with his vocals and his addiction both of which had gotten taken care of, Elton sounded better than ever and landed three top-40 pop hits in America with "Simple Life", "The Last Song", and the top ten title track "The One". Later in 1993, Elton released another album, Duets, the included his #1 remake of his "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" with George Michael. While in England, that record spun off three more top-40 hits with "True Love" with Kiki Dee (UK #2), "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" with RuPaul (UK #7), and "Ain't Nothin' Like The Real Thing" with Marcella Detroit of Shakespear's Sisster (UK #24), the former single only got to #56 on the American pop chart (but did climb to #21 on the Adult Contempoary radio chart).
The following year, songwriter Tim Rice was hired to pen the words for the music to the soundtrack of the upcoming Disney animated movie The Lion King. He had previously done the same for their hit Aladdin with Alan Mencken, but since Mencken was unavailable Rice brought on board Elton John for his first big movie tie-in since the soundtrack to Friends way back in the early 1970s. Elton wrote the music for five songs from the movie, with the epic "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" released as a single to radio and retail. It would become his biggest original song since "I Don't Want To Go On With You Like That" back in 1988...
"Can You Feel The Love Tonight" returned Elton to the American pop top ten in August of 1994. The song spent two months (eight weeks) at #1 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart in Billboard magazine. Internationally, the single went to #1 in Canada and France, and reached the top ten in Sweden (#2), Norway (#4), Austria (#4), New Zealand (#7), Australia (#9), Ireland (#9), and Switzerland (#10). In his native Britain, "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" stopped at #14. The song would go on to win Best Original Song at the Oscars in 1995, when it was nominated along side its own album's "Circle Of Life" and "Hakuna Matata". At the Grammys, Elton won best male pop performance, but long out on Song of the Year, which went to another film track, "Streets Of Philadelphia" for Bruce Springsteen, which also took Elton's nominated prize of "Best Song from a Movie or TV".
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Here's Elton performing the song at the Oscars in 1995...
and next up I believe was at the Grammys...
And from his concert tour in 1994...
Again live in 1998 in Nashville...
And finally, Elton with a nice intro to the song in 2003...
Up tomorrow: A diva offers up her companionship.
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