Songoftheday 7/7/20 -Don't leave me in all this pain, don't leave me out in the rain...
from the album Secrets (1996)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (eleven weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 37
Today's song of the day comes from pop/soul singer Toni Braxton, who landed her first #1 pop hit with the two-for-one single "You're Making Me High", the lead single from her second album Secrets, and "Let It Flow", from the Waiting To Exhale soundtrack. The second release from Secrets would be the ballad "Un-Break My Heart", written by Dianne Warren and produced by David Foster. Lamenting a broken up romance, Toni pleads for her boyfriend to come back. The video is even darker, making the lover die and reconciliation a non-starter...
Toni Braxton topped the American pop chart for eleven weeks starting in December of 1996, becoming her most successful single. (Of course, that was helped by No Doubt not releasing a commercial single for their #1 radio hit "Don't Speak".) The song spent a month at #2 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, while getting to #4 on their Adult Top-40 format list. But its best showing was on "easy listening" radio, topping the Adult Contempoary chart for fourteen weeks. The song was transformed into a club banger by remixers like Frankie Knuckles and Hex Hector, and spent an incredible four weeks at #1 on Billboard's Dance Club Play tally (an eternity in modern times). Internationally, the single went to #1 in Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Poland, and Romania. It also reached the top ten in the UK (#2), Germany (#2), Ireland (#2), Spain (#2), the Netherlands (#2), Norway (#2), Denmark (#2), Iceland (#2), Czech Republic (#4), Canada (#5), Finland (#5), Hungary (#5), Australia (#6), Italy (#7), and France (#8). At the Grammy Awards in 1997, "Un-Break My Heart" won the award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
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"Unbreak My Heart" had as much success as a dance song than as a ballad. Here's the remix from the late great Frankie Knuckles..
and here is Toni performing the song at the Billboard Music Awards, with the ballad segueing into the club version., with a dancing pair of gentlemen in the front...
For the Grammys, she stuck to the ballad style...
And lastly, live at the Java Jazz Fest in 2010...
Up tomorrow: R&B singer is descending.
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