Robbed hit of the week 12/7/20 - No Mercy's "When I Die"...

 

 

"When I Die" - No Mercy

from the album No Mercy (1996)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #41 (one week)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from Eurodance act No Mercy, a trio of American singers producer Frank Farian of Milli Vanilli infamy put together in the 1990s to capitalize on the Latin youth market. The plan seemed to have worked, with their debut record scoring two top-40 pop hits in America with "Where Do You Go" and "Please Don't Go". The third release from the record would be a song actually coming from the post-Rob & Fab Milli Vanilli concoction billed first as "the Real Milli Vanilli" then "Try N'B". "When I Die", written by Farian with song doctor Diane Warren, Peter Bischof-Fallenstein, and Dietmar Kawohl, The ballad put them right in the Backstreet Boy nook of the music market, thought the cadance and phrasing of the lyrics do seem to point to why it was meant as a Milli Vanilli song...

"When I Die" missed the American pop top-40 by one notch in August of 1997. Internationally, the single was much bigger, topping the chart in the Netherlands and Austria, and reaching the top ten in Australia (#2), Switzerland (#3), Germany (#5), Spain (#5), and Belgium (#7F/#27W). 

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Here's the original done by "the Real Milli Vanilli" for the planned second MV album...

And here's the group performing live in 1997...