Songoftheday 6/30/19 - What have you done to me I can't eat, I cannot sleep and I'm not the same anymore...
from the album Rhythm Of Love (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7
Today's song of the day comes from quiet storm queen Anita Baker, whose jazz-soul stylings had let her sell millions of records in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her second album Giving You The Best That I Got had spun off a top-3 pop hit in the title track as well as a top-20 follow-up in "Just Because". But by 1990, even though her stellar Compositions album scored her three top ten R&B hits, the biggest of them, "Talk To Me", only managed to rise to #44 on the pop Hot 100 in America. After a four-year break, Baker returned with her third solo album Rhythm Of Love. The lead single from the set, "Body & Soul", was another ultra-smooth soul charmer Barry Nowels and Ellen Shipley, and produced by longtime collaborator Barry J Eastmond...
"Body & Soul" became Anita's fifth and so far most recent top-40 pop hit in October of 1994. The song also climbed to #4 on the R&B chart in Billboard magazine, and peaked at #25 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio list. Internationally, the single missed the top-40 in the UK (#48) and Canada (#47). At the Grammy Awards in 1995, the song was nominated for Best R&B Female Vocal, which she lost to Toni Braxton for her "Breathe Again". Meanwhile, the Rhythm Of Love album was nominated for Best R&B Album, which Boyz II Men took for II.
The second single from Rhythm Of Love, the lush "I Apologize", went to #8 on the R&B chart, but stalled down at #74 on the pop Hot 100. It also was a minor British hit at #86, and won Anita her fifth Grammy for Best R&B Female Vocal Performance. A third offering, "It's Been You", got to #32 on the R&B tally. After a duet from the movie Forget Paris, "When You Love Someone" with James Ingram, got to #39 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #71 on the R&B list, they were nominated for Best Pop Vocal Collaboration at the 1996 Grammys, losing out to the Chieftains and Van Morrison for their remade "Have I Told You Lately".
After a ten year long absence that found her changing over to Atlantic Records then suing to get out of it, Baker finally landed on Blue Note Records, releasing her My Everything album in 2004. The title cut "You're My Everything" went to #25 on the R&B chart and #40 on the Adult Contemporary list, but the song only made it to #74 on the pop Hot 100, even though the album was a top-5 hit. Again disappearing for years, Baker returned in 2012 with a cover of the Tyrese neo-soul single "Lately", which rose to #15 on the R&B chart and was a giant #1 hit on the Adult R&B format. But anticipation for a new album waned as time went, and an announcement that she is retiring upset a ot of people, like myself, until she announced a residency in Las Vegas coming up that then turned into a "Farewell Tour". So who knows, I'm hoping Anita gets herself together and does her legacy proper.
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Here's Anita on the TV special Pavarotti and Friends in 1994...
And lastly, another appearance on Soul Train...
Up tomorrow: Our first taste of Biggie Smalls. Twice, actually.
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