Songoftheday 4/10/20 - Your arms are warm but they make me feel as if they're made of cold cold steel...

"Chains" - Tina Arena
from the album Don't Ask (1994)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #38 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3

Today's song of the day comes from Australian pop singer/songwriter Tina Arena, who grew up in Melbourne as Filippina Arena, the daughter of Italian immigrants. She started as a child star, singing on the Young Talent Time television show, and even releasing a record with co-star Little John in 1977. In 1985, still a teenager, she released a one-off single "Turn Up The Beat" just under "Tina" that nicked the Australian singles chart at #92.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Arena was signed to major-label EMI Records, where she released her debut album Strong As Steel (the title track was a remake of the Five Star hit ballad from three years prior). Lead single "I Need Your Body" was a success at #3, but the album, mostly written by producer Ross Inglis, put her in the teeny-bop category like Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, and yes, Kylie Minogue, while she wanted to branch out more into adult fare written by herself.

Her wish was granted when she moved to Columbia Record and went to record her sophomore disc Don't Ask with producer David Tyson (Alannah Myles, Amanda Marshall). All of the songs on the original record were co-written by Tina, and the level of the material was classier from it. The lead single from the project, "Chains" was written by Arena with Pam Reswick and Steve Werfel. A sultry mid-tempo dance-pop number about being stuck in a relationship, it had the smoky jazz-like grooves that remind me of Harriet's "Temple Of Love" from a few years prior...

"Chains" became Arena's first (and so far only) top-40 pop hit in America in May of 1996. The song also appeared on both the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart at #17 and the Adult Top-40 format list at #20 in Billboard magazine. The house music transformations of the song helped it rise to #13 on their Dance Club Play chart. Internationally, the single was a big success, reaching the top ten in her native Australia (#4), the UK (#6), New Zealand (#7), and Ireland (#9). It also made the top-40 in Poland (#11), Canada (#20), Iceland (#29), and Sweden (#38). Arena's follow-up single, "Sorrento Moon (I Remember)" was another top ten hit in Australia at #7, and got to #16 in New Zealand, #20 in Austria, and #22 in the UK. Her third release was "Heaven Help My Heart", which got to #22 in Australia, #25 in the UK, and #33 in New Zealand, and would wind up being a top-20 country hit in the U.S. for Wynonna Judd that same year. Then came "Wasn't It Good", which just missed the top ten in Australia at #11 just at the time when "Chains" was breaking in America. When the Don't Ask album was released in the States, an extra song was added to the set, a cover of American country-rocker Maria McKee's Days Of Thunder song "Show Me Heaven". It was released as a single to follow "Chains", but missed the pop chart, "bubbling under" the Hot 100 here at #103 (it did make the British Top-40 at #29). Meanwhile Down Under, the fifth and final single "That's The Way A Woman Feels", managed to make in into the top-40 in Australia at #31. When all was said and done, the Don't Ask album was her first #1 record in Australia, while in America it stopped at the halfway mark on the sales chart at #101.

Arena returned in 1997 with her ambitious third record In Deep, which was released in different versions in Australia, the UK, American, Japan, Latin America, and even a French-language-predominant one. The first single from the set, the power-ballad "Burn", which landed Tina her biggest hit in her home country at #2. However, initially the U.S. balked on the song, it would eventually become known more for the cover done by country singer Jo Dee Messina, who took it to #2 on the Country songs chart, #17 at Adult Contemporary, and just missing the top-40 on the Hot 100 at #42 in 2000. Meanwhile, the French version spun off three big hits in Europe with "Aller Plus Haut" and "Les Trois Cloches" reaching #1 in Belgium, and duet with Marc Anthony "I Want To Spend My Lifetime Loving You" hitting #3 in France. And a version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway standard "Whistle Down The Wind" put her back in the Top-40 in Britain at #24. The album was her second #1 in Australia, but in the U.S. the stellar set went pretty much unnoticed.

With America leaving Tina behind, her next record Just Me in 2001 was a little less successful even homeside, with the third single release "Symphony Of Life" saving it by reaching #8 in Australia, so far her most recent top ten solo hit there, and the album getting to #7. Two years later, she teamed up with American DJ Ray Roc of the Roc Project to feature on his single "Never (Past Tense)" which became a decent dance hit in the U.S., topping Billboard's Dance Airplay chart, hitting the Dance Club Play list at #4, and popping on to the Hot 100 chart at #97. It also nearly made the top-40 in the UK at #42. In 2005, Arena released her first all-French album Un autre univers, which spun off the single "Aimer jusqu'à l'impossible" ("Love Until The Impossible"), which went to #1 in Belgium and #3 in France. Finding herself more successful in France (and dropped from her label in Australia), Tina released a second French set 7 Vies, which landed another French top-10 hit with "Entends-tu le monde?" ("Do You Hear The World?"), which peaked at #10 in France. Meanwhile at home Down Under Arena returned to EMI Records, releasing the all-covers set Songs of Love And Loss (and a sequel album). Even though radio wasn't biting, with a remake of "To Sir With Love" stalling down at #62, the album was a big seller, reaching #3 and going platinum there. Spreading out to the stage and television, Tina came back with another studio album in 2013, Reset, which scored her most recent original top-40 hit in Australia with "You Set Fire To My Life" (#38 AUS), and the album reaching the top ten at #4. Her most recent English-language studio album, Eleven was released in 2015, going all the way to #2 on the albums chart in her home country, and single "I Want To Love You" slipping onto the singles chart at #72. That same year, her performance of "Chains" with Jessica Mauboy and the Veronicas from the ARIA Awards (the Aussie version of the Grammys) put her back on the chart all the way at #14. Since then, she's starred in the country's production of Evita, and her newest music being the 2018 release of French album Quand tout Recommence in 2018.

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There was an alternate video for the US and the International markets...