Songoftheday 5/24/19 - I read her letters and I saw her picture, and I smelled her cheap perfume it must have come from you...
from the album Greatest Hits 1980-1994 (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8
Today's song of the day comes from the late great Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin. After landing her second #1 pop hit in 1987 with her duet with George Michael, "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)", her follow-up album Through The Storm, a hugely collaborative set, got a much more muted response, with the lead single "Through The Storm" with Elton John becoming a top-20 pop hit in the spring of 1989, while the second, "It Isn't, It Wasn't, It Ain't Ever Gonna Be", which paired Aretha with the then-white-hot Whitney Houston, peaked right under the pop top-40 at #41 that summer. She started the 1990s off with yet another album, What You See Is What You Sweat, which garnered an even worse reaction, being her first secular studio record since 1979 to fail to produce even a hit on the pop Hot 100 chart, though two of its tracks reached the top-20 on Billboard magazine's R&B list, with her cover of Sly & The Family Stone's "Everyday People" (#13 R&B, #33 Dance) as well as her duet with Michael McDonald on "Ever Changing Times" (#19 R&B, #11 Adult Contemporary), although the later made it to #38 in Canada. The album, the first since Billboard started electronically tracking sales with Soundscan at record stores, was her lowest studio set of her career, stopping at #153.
So it seemed like Arista Records was readying itself for possibly letter her go with a compilation of her biggest successes at the label from 1980 to that point, Greatest Hits 1980-1994. Along with a dozen singles from her term at Arista there were three new recordings which would be released as singles (although to be honest while there were three choices from What You See Is What You Sweat, there were none from Through The Storm). The first to be released from the hit set would be a cover of a very recent club hit, "Deeper Love" from C+C Music Factory's Clivilles and Cole, which had topped the Dance Club Play chart and just missed the American pop top-40 at #44 in the spring of 1992. Aretha's version of "Deeper Love", also produced by Clivilles and Cole, also went to #1 on the Dance Club Play chart, went to #30 on the R&B chart, and stopped at #63 on the pop Hot 100. It was also featured in the movie Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit with Whoopi Goldberg.
But it would be the second single from the compilation that would reverse Aretha's fortunes. "Willing To Forgive", written and produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and Daryl Simmons, was a current-sounding smooth adult-soul ballad about confronting a cheating lover. While she was able for do the titular deed, she by no means was going to forget...
"Willing To Forgive" returned Aretha to the pop top-40 for the first time in five years in July of 1994. The song climbed to #5 on Billboard's R&B chart, and went to #22 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening" format tally. Internationally, the single did even better across the pond, peaking at #17 in the UK. A third release from Greatest Hits 1980-1994, "Honey" (also written by Babyface and Simmons along with L.A. Reid), went to #30 on the R&B chart, while "bubbling under" the American pop Hot 100 at #114. The album would go on to sell over a million copies, and Arista would keep Aretha on for a couple more albums. In 1995, her version of "Deeper Love" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B performance, which was won by Toni Braxton's "Breathe Again".
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
The "B-side" of the "Willing To Forgive" single would be a new dance rework of Aretha's 1982 hit "Jump To It" done by CJ Mackintosh. That remix would bring the song back to Billboard's Dance Club Play chart, climbing to #18 in 1994...
Next up is a live audio of Aretha performing "Willing To Forgive" live in 1994...
And finally, a live TV performance from that same year (I believe at Oprah's 40th birthday bash)...
Up tomorrow: R&B vocal group possibly Marie Kondo's you?
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