Robbed hit of the week 7/6/20 - Amanda Marshall's "Birmingham"...
from the album Amanda Marshall (1995)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #43
This week's "robbed hit" comes from Canadian singer Amanda Marshall. Hailing from Toronto, Ontario, Amanda released her self-titled debut album in her homeland in 1995. The album was produced by David Tyson, who helped fellow Canuck Alannah Myles top the American charts in the early 1990s with "Black Velvet". The first single of the record, "Let It Rain", made the top ten in Norway at #3 and Canada at #7, and was a top-40 hit in Australia (#30) and New Zealand (#23). But it was the second release, "Birmingham", that gave Amanda her biggest hit and exposure in the United States. Written by Tyson with Gerald O'Brien and Dean McTaggart, the song told a story of an abused wife who finds a way to flee in the night after her husband blacks out drunk, heading to the titular city...
While "Birmingham" became Marshall's biggest Canadian hit, peaking at #3, the song stopped just short of the American top-40 in November of 1996. The song did much better at the Adult Top-40 radio format, reaching #14 and staying on the genre chart for 23 weeks. The Amanda Marshall album got to #4 in Canada, while slipping on to the American Billboard 200 sales list at #156. That debut would end up scoring seven top 40 hits in Canada. Her midtempo jangle-pop follow-up "Fall From Grace" went to #17 in her native country, and was her second and last hit on Adult Top-40 at #23. That was followed by the ballad "Beautiful Goodbye", which returned Amanda to the top ten in Canada at #5, while giving the singer her best rank in the UK at #79. Then came "Dark Horse", which also peaked at #5 while giving Amanda her sole #1 on Canada's Adult Contemporary radio list. The uptempo rock jam "Sitting On Top Of The World" gave Marshall a third #5 hit in a row in Canada. Lastly, "Trust Me (This Is Love)" landed Amanda's lucky seventh top-40 Canadian single at #24.
In 1999, Marshall came back with her sophomore effort, Tuesday's Child, produced by Don Was (Bonnie Raitt, B-52's). In Canada, the album again went to #4, and produced four top-40 hits there including two #10 singles in "Believe In You" and "Love Lift Me", but the set was criminally ignored in the States, only getting to #30 on Billboard's "Heatseekers" album sales chart (for acts who never reached the top half of the Billboard 200). She returned in 2001 with her third and most recent studio album Everybody's Got A Story, co-produced by a pair of yet another big names, Peter Asher (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt) and Billy Mann (Pink). Lead track "Everybody's Got A Story" reached the top ten in Canada at #6, and was followed by three more top-20 hits, with "Double Agent" her last chart appearance there at #19. Unfortunately, Marshall became a casualty of struggles with her record company, and hasn't released any new music since a greatest hits set in 2003. Her three records are definitely worth listening to, and she deserved a much longer and fruitful career than what she was given in the States.
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And here's Amanda performing the song live in concert...
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