Songoftheday 7/17/20 - Sorrow is a lonely feeling unsettled is a painful place, I've lived with both for far too long now since we've parted ways...

"Just Between You and Me" - DC Talk
from the album Jesus Freak (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #29 (four weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9

Today's song of the day comes from Christian pop group DC Talk, who were started when Michael Tait, Toby McKeehan, and Kevin Max Smith came together at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in the late 1980s. Signing with the religious music label Forefront Records, the trio released their self-titled debut album in 1989. As opposed to acts like Jars Of Clay, who played for the college rock radio crowd, or Amy Grant and the like, who aimed for the easy listening market, DC Talk put out how they interpreted as contemporary pop and rap music. The debut spun off a moderate Christian rock radio hit with "Spinnin' Around" (#13 Christian Rock). Two more albums came after, with their profile on Christian radio gaining them fans and spurring sales, with their third disc going on to sell over a million copies.

In 1996, the trio put out their fourth and most successful disc, Jesus Freak. The lead single and title track "Jesus Freak", an appropriation of the post-grunge/hard rock scene that was popular, nearly made the pop chart, "bubbling under" at #110. But it was the second release that the record company, now being distributed by Virgin Records, decided to all out push to MTV and secular radio. "Just Between You And Me", written by McKeehan and Mark Heimermann, and sounding like a Seal single, was vague enough to click with mainstream radio and was their one and only big crossover..

"Just Between You And Me" became DC Talk's first and only top-40 pop hit in December of 1996. The song was big at the Adult Top-40 radio format, almost making the top ten at #11 and spending a half a year (26 weeks) on the chart and got to #24 at Adult Contemporary airplay. Internationally, the single peaked at #6 in Canada. All in all, nine songs from Jesus Freak made the Christian radio charts, and the disc, which hit #16 on the Billboard 200 sales chart in America, went on to move over two million units. It also won the trio their second Grammy Award (after Free At Last) for Rock Gospel Album.

The following year, DC talk put out a live album, Welcome To The Freak Show, which made the bottom half of the American albums sales chart at #109, and scored them a third Grammy in that category. In 1998, the group released their most recent full-length studio album Supernatural. Although adapting to the success of the single by making the whole album an adult-pop piece, mainstream radio didn't bite, even after the set debuted in the top ten on the Billboard 200 at #4. It was also nominated for a Grammy, but in the Pop/Contemporary Gospel category instead of rock, losing out to Deniece Williams that year. After that, the three went their separate ways, although in 2001 they released Solo which included each of their own projects, and ended up winning yet another Christian Rock Grammy. They've reunited for some performances, but no new music has emerged as a DC Talk release.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


Here's a clip of the trio in concert...

Up tomorrow: German-American Eurodance act revises a AM radio hit from 1974.