Robbed hit of the week 7/1/19 - Wet Wet Wet's "Love Is All Around"...
from the albums Four Weddings & A Funeral (Original Soundtrack) and Part One (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #41
This week's "robbed hit" comes from the British sophisti-pop group Wet Wet Wet, who came together in the Scottish town of Clydebank in the early 1980s. With lead singer Marti Pellow, Neil Mitchell on keyboards, drummer Tommy Cunningham, and bassist Graeme Clarke (with the help of guitar ace Graeme Duffin), the group signed on with Polygram Records, where they released their debut single "Wishing I Was Lucky". The song ended up their first top ten hit in the British Isles, hitting #6 on both the British and Irish singles chart, as well as becoming their first minor hit in the U.S. at #58 in 1987. Their first album, Popped In Souled Out, shortly followed, with two more top ten successes with "Sweet Little Mystery" and "Angel Eyes (Home and Away)" both reaching #5.
The following year saw the band score their first #1 hit in Britain and Ireland with a cover of the Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends" (which was "double-A-Sided" with Billy Bragg's cover of "She's Leaving Home") that they did for charity benefiting children. They returned in 1989 with their second studio album Holding Back The River, which landed a second Irish chart-topper with lead single "Sweet Surrender". Their first album of the nineties, High On The Happy Side, got them another #1 in Ireland that also topped the British chart, "Goodnight Girl". With a live album producing another top-40 hit with "Blue For You", and the band was white-hot, accumulating 14 top-40 hits (out of 15 releases) up to that point.
With this history, the group put out a greatest hits set initially in the UK called End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits (by the time it would get released in the States, it would simply be Part One). A few new tracks were added to the set. The first, "Shed A Tear", did modestly at #22, while "Cold Cold Heart" did a little better, peaking at #22. But it would be a cover song they did for a romantic comedy movie that would give the band their biggest by far worldwide success. "Love Is All Around" was a baroque-pop gem first released by the British band the Troggs, whose lead singer Reg Presley wrote the song. In 1967 the song reached the top ten in the UK (#5), Canada (#6), and the U.S.A. (#7)...
Wet Wet Wet chose to record the song for the film Four Weddings and A Funeral starring Hugh Grant and Andie McDowell. They released the song in the spring of 1994, and it quickly rose to #1 on the British chart, where it stayed for a massive 15 weeks (still not enough to beat the current record holder of Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" which stayed a week longer. With its undeniable British success, coupled with the positive American reception to Four Weddings, seemed like a no-brainer for this record on mainstream American radio, no?
Well, no. Although the single climbed to #8 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio format chart in Billboard magazine in America, the song stalled one notch below the pop top-40 in October of 1994, becoming the band's second and so far last minor pop hit here. Meanwhile, internationally, the single topped the charts in Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland, and went to #2 in France, Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland. It got to #5 in Spain, but like America, the single stalled at #17 in Canada. And of course its record in the UK got their End Of Part One album to be re-released with the track added, which brought the collection to #1 on the albums sales chart in Britain.
"Love Is All Around" was also put on Wet Wet Wet's next studio album, Picture This. While five other songs from the album reached the top-20 or better in England, America passed this one completely by otherwise. In 1997, with their album 10, they landed two more top-5 hits, including the #3 "If I Never See You Again". But after touring behind the album, disputes over money split the band up, seeing Pellow setting out to go solo. While his debut solo single "Close To You" did well at #9, as did his first solo album Smile at #7, that didn't last long at all. Cleaning himself up from addiction, Marti reunited with Wet Wet Wet in 2004 that resulted in another hits collection that contained a moderate hit with "All I Want" (UK #14). They continued to tour on the nostalgic circuit very successfully, and in 2007 put out their most recent studio record Timeless. The second single from the set, "Weightless", climbed all the way to #10. In 2017, Pellow left the band again presumably for good, and so far has released eleven solo albums, with four of them hitting the top-40 on the albums chart in the UK. His most recent record Mysterious came in 2017. Meanwhile Kevin Simm of the pop-dance act Liberty X has taken the lead singer position since.
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Here's the band's triumphant Christmas performance on Top Of The Pops in 1994 after ruling the charts that year...
Next up in concert in 1997 in their native Scotland...
And again at Live 8 in 2005...
and lastly, for another charity program, Children In Need, in 2013...
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