Songoftheday 8/19/20 - It feels like springtime in winter it feels like Christmas in June, it feels like heaven has opened up it's gates for me and you...

 

 

"Every Time I Close My Eyes" - Babyface

from the album The Day (1996)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 23

 

Today's song of the day comes from singer/songwriter/producer Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds, who had resurrected a soul nugget from the disco act Shalamar as the first single from his 1996 album The Day. "This Is For The Lover In You", which featured Jody Watley, Howard Hewett, and Jeffrey Daniels from the group as well as rapper LL Cool J, reached the pop top ten in the fall of that year. His next release from the record was the ballad "Every Time I Close My Eyes", a straightforward love song geared towards the anniversary celebrating crowd. Supporting Babyface on the single were two of the biggest pop stars of the decade, Mariah Carey singing back-up and Kenny G gifting a sax solo. And you can say he predicted the whole "snap-track" percussion tic prevalent in country music today with this production...

 "Every Time I Close My Eyes" became Babyface's sixth and so far most recent top ten pop hit in March of 1997. The song also made both the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") (#17) and Adult Top-40 radio format charts in Billboard magazine. It also rose to #5 on their R&B list as well. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in New Zealand at #8, while landing in the Top-40 in the UK (#13) and Australia (#40). At the Grammy Awards in 1998, Babyface was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the song, losing out to Elton John's unstoppable "Candle In The Wind 1997". 

The next release from The Day was "How Come, How Long", a collaboration with Stevie Wonder that was poignant in subject matter and criminally overlooked by radio stations, missing the top-40 on both the pop (#47) and R&B (#45) airplay charts (it didn't help that the track wasn't released as a commercial single and ineligible for both lists). That song was much more warmly received internationally, reaching the top ten in the Netherlands, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Austria, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland. But it was actually nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Collaboration two years in a row, first for the album version in 1998 and a year later for a live version from his MTV Unplugged stint (which is really kind of dicey as it is), losing both times.I still think it's his best work. A final single from the album, "Talk To Me", was ignored in the States, but was a minor hit in New Zealand (#50) and the Netherlands (#75).

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Here's Babyface performing the song live (to track) on a TV appearance in 1997 (with the backup singers embarrassingly miming Mariah's vocals)...

And next up, in concert in 2008...

Fast forward to a show at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2017...

Up tomorrow: Alternative gourds pick a number.