Songoftheday 5/17/20 - Till then on days when the sun is gone, we'll hang on and we'll wish upon the moon...
from the album The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Original Soundtrack) (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #30 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8
Today's song of the day comes from the pop/soul group All-4-One, who had landed a top ten pop hit in the summer of 1995 with their cover of the country #1 hit "I Can Love You Like That" from John Michael Montgomery. However, nothing else from the record made a big impression with radio or fans. The quartet returned the following year with a song they recorded for the Disney animated film The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, the latest in a string of successful movie from the powerhouse company. "Someday", written by Alan Mencken and Stephen Schwartz and produced by Simon Climie (Naked Eyes, Climie Fisher), was a by-the-books ballad that graced each film and became a hit, and this was no different...
"Someday" became All-4-One's fourth, and to date last, top-40 pop hit in August of 1996. The song also climbed to #14 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") chart, and reached #83 on their R&B chart as well. Internationally, the single just missed the top-40 in New Zealand at #41, and was a minor hit in Canada at #57 (elsewhere there was another version that was in the movie). The Hunchback soundtrack just missed the top ten on the Billboard 200 sales list, topping out at #11.
During that time, though, trouble between their own label and Atlantic Records caused them to be dropped from the major, after the release of their next album On & On. Hence, the promotion for the single "I Will Be Right Here" faltered, and it missed the pop chart altogether, only making the Adult Contemporary list at #24. In 2001 they returned to independently release their A41 record, which spun off the easy listening hit "Beautiful As U", which went to #13 on the Adult Contemporary chart. Their most recent radio hit came in 2009 when "My Child", from their No Regrets set, climbed to #58 on the R&B chart. Their most recent studio album, Twenty+, was released in 2015, but they've continued to tour with other "90s oldies" acts.
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While the American and Canadian versions of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame featured All-4-One's recording of "Someday", in the UK and Europe their soundtracks would include the British female vocal group Eternal, best known in the States for their hit "Stay". Their take of "Someday" did quite a bit better, peaking at #4 in the UK, #18 in Ireland, and #27 in Australia...
Meanwhile for the Spanish-speaking market Mexican singer Luis Miguel recorded "Sueña". which topped Billboard's Latin Pop Songs chart...
Finally, here's All-4-One performing the song live in 1996...
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