Songoftheday 11/7/20 - Without you there'd be no sun in my sky, there would be no love in my life there'd be no world left for me...

 

 

"How Do I Live" - Trisha Yearwood

from the album (Songbook) A Collection Of Hits (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #23 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 5

 

Today's song of the day comes from country singer Trisha Yearwood, who grew up in Georgia before moving to Nashville to start a career, which began with her interning and singing backup before a then unknown singer by the name of Garth Brooks hooked her up with a couple producers and she ended up being signed to MCA in the beginning of the 1990s. Her debut single, "She's In Love With The Boy", went all the way to #1 on Billboard's Country Songs chart in 1991. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Performance, losing to Mary-Chapin Carpenter for "Down At the Twist And Shout". It was one of four top ten country hits from the record (which made the Billboard 200 sales list at #31), a feat repeated by her sophomore effort, Hearts In Armor. From that set her collab with former Eagle Don Henley, "Walkaway Joe", was also nominated for a Grammy, which again went to Carpenter for "Passionate Kisses".  In 1993, her third release, The Song Remembers When, only spun off two country hit singles, but one of them, "The Song Remembers When", claimed her first song to make Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart (mostly from sales of the single) at #82. The album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Album in the year the category was rebooted from the 1960s, but that went to Carpenter's Stones In The Road. A year later, she appeared on the soul/country fusion collab album Rhythm Country & Blues, and her duet with Aaron Neville, a cover of Patsy Cline's "I Fall To Pieces", finally won her a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Collaboration. 

 

Trisha's next studio set, Thinkin' About You, scored five charting country hits, including two #1's in "XXX's and OOO's (An American Girl)" and "Thinkin' About You", with both "bubbling under" Billboard's Hot 100 chart as well. Again, Trisha was up for a Grammy, but Shania Twain's massive The Woman In Me took the prize. In 1996, Yearwood returned in 1996 with Everybody Knows, and its lead single "Believe Me Baby (I Lied)" went to #1. It was up for the Best Female Country Vocal Grammy, which teen newcomer LeAnn Rimes took for her debut single "Blue", while the album lost to Lyle Lovett's quirky The Road To Ensenada. 

This brings us to 1997, when songwriting master Diane Warren wrote the breakup power-ballad "How Do I Live" for the Nicholas Cage movie Con Air. Originally intended for Rimes, who recorded the track, the film's producers scoffed at the idea of such a youngster singing such lyrics, and unbeknownst to her, hired Trisha to record the song. Both versions were released separately the same week, and the mainstream public and pop radio turned on to LeAnn's version immediately. However country stations would prefer Trisha's version, and with radio and sales of both going strong, both hit both the pop and country chart, with Yearwood finding herself not only on the pop Hot 100, but in the top-40 for the first (and criminally only) time...

Trisha's version of "How Do I Live" reached the American pop Top-40 in July of 1997. The song was a much success on country radio, where it spent a week at #2. Internationally, her single went to #2 in Ireland and #3 in Australia, and was a minor hit in the UK at #66. While the song didn't appear on the soundtrack to Con Air, Trisha's first greatest hits album, (Songbook) A Collection Of Hits, was released that August with "How Do I Live" on it, and because of that became her first top ten album on the Billboard 200 at #4 while topping their Country Albums list, her first #1 there. At the Grammy Awards in 1998, the song made history when both Trisha and LeAnn's versions were nominated for Best Country Vocal Performance, which Trisha ended up winning. The song was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Song, which unfortunately had no chance in beating Celine Dion's "My Heart Would Go On" from Titanic. 

The Songbook album would spin off two more country radio hits, with "In Another's Eyes", a duet with Garth, going to #2, while the upbeat "A Perfect Love" spent two weeks at the top. The former won the pair a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration in 1997. 

After being with producer Garth Fundis from her debut, Trisha switched up to hire on Tony Brown for her next studio album Where Your Road Leads. Lead single "There Goes My Baby" went to #2 and returned her to the Hot 100 at #93, and scored another Grammy nom (which went to Shania Twain for the unstoppable "You're Still The One"). A year later, the album was up for a trophy, which the Dixie Chicks took for their debut Wide Open Spaces. 

The beginning of the new millennium found Trisha divorced for the second time, and one of her best albums Real Live Woman released. Both the record and the title track were up for a Grammy, with both going home with Faith Hill for Breathe. That was followed by Inside Out, which had her biggest Hot 100 hit aside from "How Do I Live", "I Would've Loved You Anyway", which barely missed the top-40 at #44 in 2001, and got the Grammy nod for Best Female Country Vocal, which went to Dolly Parton for her bluegrass cover of Collective Soul's "Shine". The album and title track, another duet with Henley, was also up for Grammys. 

After a couple of years off, Trisha reunited with both Garths, with Garth Fundis producing her 2005 album Jasper County, and Garth Brooks finally marrying her. The set was her first top ten album on the Billboard 200 at #4 (and her only non-greatest hit or seasonal one), and first single "Georgia Rain" put her in the Hot 100 for her most recent time at #78 (#15 Country). And again, both were given nominations for Grammys (by now, you can tell how revered she is in the music industry). Another track from the album, "Trying To Love You", stalled down at #52 on the country singles chart, but was her first to make the pop Adult Contemporary radio format chart in Billboard at #28.

Yearwood's next studio set, Heaven, Heartache, and the Power Of Love, came in 2007 and while it may have gotten a more reserved reception on radio, it again was nominated for the Best Country Album Grammy (which George Strait won for Troubadour, and three songs were also up with "Heaven Heartache and the Power Of Love" (Country #19) and "This Is Me You're Talking To" (Country #25) losing to Carrie Underwood in successive years, while album track "Let The Wind Chase You" with Keith Urban lost the Country Collab Grammy to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' "Killing the Blues". But those nominations were also her most recent.

Since then Trisha has put her music career more on the back burner, both figureatively and literally, as she started appearing on the Food Network on her own cooking show, along with a successful series of cookbooks. Yearwood also appeared on the religious musical Passion on TV, from which she had a second Adult Contemporary radio hit with "Broken" at #17. She has released three more albums, including a set of her older hits re-recorded, a jazz album for the cookware chain Williams Sonoma, and one more straight country set, Every Girl, which came out in 2019. The lead single "Every Girl In This Town" climbed to #21 on Billboard's Country Airplay chart. Trisha and Garth also released a Christmas album together, appropriately Christmas Together, which had a cover of "Santa Baby" that hit #17 at Adult Contemporary and #60 Country in 2017 (her most recent chart appearance).  But no matter what she branches into, Trisha has cemented her place as one of the most heralded and truly quality careers in country music. 

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Here's Trisha appearing at the American Music Awards in 1997, where Songbook was up for Best Country Album...

and at the Oscars the following year...

and lastly, in concert at Farm Aid in 1999...

Up tomorrow: Batman's hometown gets props.