Robbed hit of the week 10/5/20 - Jon Secada's "Too Late, Too Soon"...

 

 

"Too Late Too Soon" - Jon Secada

from the album Secada (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #41 (two weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from soft-pop star Jon Secada, whose second English-language album Heart, Soul & A Voice in 1994 had spun off top top-40 pop hits with  "Mental Picture" and the top ten single "If You Go". He also recorded a song with R&B singer Shanice for the animated Disney film Pocahontas, but surprisingly "If I Never Knew You" failed to make the pop Hot 100 chart in 1995, only "bubbling under" at #108 (a shock for that company's track record). After a stint on Broadway's Grease, Secada returned in 1997 with his third English effort Secada. The lead single was "Too Late Too Soon", a dramatic ballad in the vein of his previous pop successes. Written by Jon with the track's producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, it seemed at the time like a surefire bet to bring him back to radio...

 

 While "Too Late Too Soon" was a decent hit at "easy listening" radio, making both the Adult Contemporary (#8) and Adult Top-40 (#30) charts, the song stalled one notch below the American pop top-40 chart for two weeks in May of 1997. The Spanish-language version of the song, "Amándolo", did manage to rise to #10 on Billboard magazine's Latin Songs chart. Internationally, the single also barely missed the British Top-40 at #43, while stalling down at #56 in Canada and #61 in Germany. The Secada album did marginally better, peaking at #40, but no other singles from the album made any impression, even on AC radio. 

 

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There was a dance version of the track that I quite liked, but even that didn't make Billboard's Club chart...

 

Next up, the Spanish-language version "Amándolo" ("Loving It") that made the Latin Songs top ten...

 

 

Here's Jon appearing on TV to promote the single in 1997...

 

 And lastly, Jon in concert in Rio in 2010...