Songoftheday 2/29/20 - While all the time that I was loving you, you were busy loving yourself...
from the albums Waiting To Exhale (Original Soundtrack) (1995) and Share My World (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 17
Today's song of the day comes from R&B singer Mary J. Blige, whose sophomore album My Life had scored her a pair of top-40 pop hits with "Be Happy" and a cover of Rose Royce's "I'm Goin' Down". Besides that, Mary sang on Wu-Tang Clan rapper Method Man's single "I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need To Get By", with interpolated the Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell classic. That "event" single went all the way to #3 on the pop chart in the summer of 1995, so far her best showing at that time. That year she also did a few other side projects; first a song for the hip-hop movie The Show, "Everyday It Rains", which went to #48 on the R&B Airplay chart. Then Mary covered the Carole King by way of Aretha Franklin classic "(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman" for the TV series New York Undercover, and the result got her back into the R&B top-40 at #39 while it popped on the pop Hot 100 at #95. But it would be the third contribution to a soundtrack that would bring Mary her into the pop top ten again. "Not Gon' Cry", written and produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, was included in the Whitney Houston vehicle Waiting To Exhale for a scene involving co-star Angela Bassett, and her stong yet sad performance shined. It was released as the third single from the soundtrack after Whitney's #1 "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" and Brandy's "Sittin' Up In My Room"...
"Not Gon' Cry" climbed all the way to the runner-up spot on the American pop chart in February of 1996. The song spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, her fourth so far. Internationally, the single went to #12 in New Zealand while slipping into the British top-40 at #39. At the Grammy Awards in 1997, Mary was nominated for Best Female R&B Vocal, along with "Exhale" and "Sitting Up In My Room" from the Waiting To Exhale movie, but in the end none of them won, but rather Toni Braxton's "You're Making Me High" (probably the votes were split).
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Blige went on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote the single...
Here's Mary performing "Not Gon' Cry" on an awards show (not sure which one)....
Next up, with Eric Clapton at a benefit concert in Antigua in 1999...
and lastly, in concert in 2016...
Up tomorrow: Boozy-faced alternative rockers needs oral confirmation in one of a two-fer.
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