Songoftheday 10/28/20 - Can we sit down and talk for a minute, you know that we've got a few things we need to work out...

 

 

"5 Miles To Empty" - Brownstone

from the album Still Climbing (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #39 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

Today's song of the day comes from the female R&B vocal group Brownstone, who landed a record deal on Michael Jackson's vanity label MJJ Records and a top ten pop hit with their first single "If You Love Me" in the beginning of 1995. However member "Mimi" Doby left the trio not too long after, and "Maxee" Maxwell and "Nicci" Gilbert brought on Kina Cosper as a replacement. They returned in 1997 with their second and what would be their final album Still Climbing. The lead single from the set was the downtempo "5 Miles To Empty", written by Gilbert with producers Gerald Baillergeau and Victor Merritt. Using the gas tank on a car as a metaphor for the juice in their relationship, the group did their plea to save the romance before it's all gone...

"5 Miles To Empty" became Brownstone's second and last top-40 pop hit in June of 1997. The song did much better at urban radio, scoring a third top ten single on Billboard magazine's R&B chart at #6. A club transformation by remixers Cutfather & Joe helped the song place on their Dance Club Play list at #38 as well. Internationally, the single peaked at #5 in New Zealand, and went to a very respectable #12 in the UK. The Still Climbing album missed the top-40 on the Billboard 200 sales chart in America at #51, but was their second top-20 success in Britain at #19.

A second single from the set, "Kiss and Tell", missed the R&B Top-40 at #41, while only "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #102, but again did bank in the UK, placing at #21. Nevertheless, the group didn't last much longer than that. Out of the three, actually Kina has had the most exposure, landing two club hits in 2000, with "Me" going all the way to #3 on Billboard's Dance chart. Sadly, Maxwell died from an accident in 2015; Gilbert restarted the group with two new members for the oldies touring circuit.

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Here's the trio performing on Top Of The Pops singing live to track in 1997...

Up tomorrow: the new era of the "boyband" arises with this Orlando team.