Songoftheday 10/14/20 - Dancing in the dark middle of the night, taking your heart and holding it tight...

 

 

"It's Your Love" - Tim McGraw

from the album Everywhere (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 17

 

Today's song of the day comes from country singer Tim McGraw, who was on a successful streak with ten top ten country hits from just his second and third albums, including "I Like It, I Love It", which reached the pop top-40 in the fall of 1995. Two years later, McGraw returned married to one of the other biggest stars in the genre, Faith Hill. Faith racked up an impressive chart record as well, landing nine top ten country records out of ten singles from her first two albums. Only one of them, though, made Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 list, when "It Matters To Me" reached #74 at the start of 1996. So it seemed natural that the pair would collaborate on at least a song, in the tradition of couples Johnny and June Carter Cash and George Jones and Tammy Wynette. The result was the ballad "It's Your Love", written by Stephony Smith. Treated as an "event" record on country radio, the single's popularity exploded, as it raced up the radio charts, and with the release of a physical single, grabbed the attention of mainstream audiences, who bought the song even though they may not be "into" country music at all. The track proves to be a wake up call to the rest of the music industry on how much a behemoth the genre would be in the game. Even further, the music video featuring the couple expecting their first child was a gamechanger in the music video world...

"It's Your Love" became the first top ten pop hit for both Tim and Faith in July of 1997. The single topped Billboard's Country Singles chart for six weeks, the longest stay at the top in 20 years. The Everywhere album landed at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, going on to sell over four million copies. It also spun off five more huge country hits, and by the time of the sixth release from the record, the Billboard charts would be changed and he would make the top-40 again.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Tim and Faith performing the song live on the CMA Awards in 1998...

Later on in 1997, female dance-pop trio She Moves released a version of "It's Your Love" as a single, which reached the top-40 of the mainstream pop radio chart, and #67 on the official Hot 100 pop tally...

and lastly, here's Tim and Faith in concert in 2017...

Up tomorrow: British lasses request your reliability.