Songoftheday 12/1/19 - It felt like spring time on this February morning, in a courtyard birds were singing your praise...
from the album Whaler (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 30
Today's song of the day comes from pop singer/songwriter Sophie B Hawkins, who had broke through on mainstream radio with her song "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover", which made the top ten in the summer of 1992. Two years later, Hawkins returned with her sophomore effort Whaler, with the uptempo adult-pop nugget "Right Beside You" as the lead single. Even though the song became her biggest British hit peaking at #13, the subtle textures of the production did not carry over to American audiences, as it stalled down at #56. The second release from the album, "Don't Don't Tell Me No", was another mid-tempo charmer, but while it scored another British top-40 hit at #36, it missed the American pop Hot 100 list altogether. The third single, though, would change all that. "As I Lay Me Down", written by Hawkins and produced by Stephen Lipson, was a simple sing-along melody that recaptured Sophie's audence...
"As I Lay Me Down" became Sophie's second and so far most recent top ten pop hit in America in October of 1995. The song was huge at "easy listening" radio, spending six weeks at #1 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary radio chart, lasting 67 weeks on the list. It even appeared on their new Adult Top-40 format tally when it started in March of 1996, where it showed up at #7. Internationally, the single peaked at #6 in Canada and #7 in Australia, and made the top-40 in Iceland (#16), Poland (#18), New Zealand (#19), and the UK (#24). A final single, "Only Love (The Ballad Of Sleeping Beauty", stalled on the pop Hot 100 chart at about the halfway mark (#49), while reaching both the Adult Contemporary (#22) and Adult Top-40 (#19). It was much bigger in Canada, grabbing another top ten hit at #7.
Sophie released her third album Timbre in 1999, but squabbles with her label caused them to squash promotion of the record and make it her last on Columbia Records. Lead single "Lose Your Way" got to #26 on the Adult Contemporary chart, but the next single "Walking In My Blue Jeans" didn't show on the chart until two years later at #23, after she got to re-release the record independently. She has released two more indie records since then, the most recent, The Crossing, coming out in 2012. An out lesbian, she's been all over the map, from supporting Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary to performing for conservative group GOProud in 2011 to acting in her partner's play about Janis Joplin.
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A second video was shot for the song by Ernie Fritz...
Here's Sophie performing live for a radio show...
and finally, in New York in 2014...
Up tomorrow: Rapper heads to school with this massive Stevie Wonder redo.
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