Songoftheday 5/31/20 - My life's been better since the day I left you boy, I must admit life's been kind to me...

"Why Does It Hurt So Bad" - Whitney Houston
from the album Waiting To Exhale (Original Soundtrack) (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's song of the day comes from the late great Whitney Houston, who in 1996 had starred in her second big movie Waiting To Exhale. From that soundtrack she already scored two hits with the #1 "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" and the top ten duet with CeCe Winans, "Count On Me". Also, Brandy and Mary J. Blige landed top ten hits from the soundtrack as well with "Sittin' Up In My Room" and "Not Gon' Cry" respectively, and Toni Braxton went to #1 with "Let It Flow". A sixth single from the record, Aretha Franklin's "It Hurts Like Hell", which went to #51 on Billboard's R&B chart and got a Grammy nomination for Best Song from a Movie/TV Show. For the seventh and final release, the third and last song on the soundtrack from Whitney, "Why Does It Hurt So Bad", was put out as a physical single, with a new remix of "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" on it. The combination of her avid fanbase and that new club redo caused the single to reach the American top 40. The song was a classic broken heart ballad written and produced by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds. Instead of a music video, MTV played her live performance from their 1996 Music Video Awards show...

"Why Does It Hurt So Bad" became Whitney's third top-40 pop hit from Waiting To Exhale and the sixth top-40 pop hit from the soundtrack altogether in August of 1996. The song peaked at #6 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart and popped in at #39 on their Adult Top-40 format list. On the R&B chart, "Why Does It..." got to #22, while on the dance chart, the B-Side "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" re-entered the Dance Club Play chart, rising to #11. Internationally, the single just missed the top-40 in Canada at #45.

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Here's the studio version of "Why Does It Hurt So Bad"...

Part of the reason of the commercial single's popularity was the inclusion of a new remix of her 1987 classic "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" done by Junior Vasquez. That version rose to #11 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart...

Up tomorrow: Canadian vocal powerhouse is having major deja vu.