Songoftheday 12/8/20 - So many nights I'd sit by my window, waiting for someone to sing me his song...

 

 

"You Light Up My Life" - LeAnn Rimes

from the album You Light Up My Life: Inspirational Songs (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 5

 

Today's song of the day comes from singer LeAnn Rimes, who had gone from teen ingenue at the age of 13 having a top-10 country hit with "Blue", to having one of the biggest pop hit singles of all time with her version of "How Do I Live". With this success, Rimes and her record company Curb rush-released another album of newly recorded material (they had already put out an "early recording" album Unchained Melody which went to #1 on the Billboard 200). As with Unchained Melody, the new set, You Light Up My Life: Inspirational Songs were mostly covers, having a tenuous nod to religion and spirituality. The song that titled the record, "You Light Up My Life", was released as the first single (though it also included an "extended" version of "How Do I Live"). 

"You Light Up My Life" was originally the title song from the 1977 film starring Didi Conn (popularly known from Grease, released a year later) as an aspiring singer. However Didi didn't actually sing that, but rather lipsynched for her life as studio singer Kacey Cisyk performed the song written and produced by Joe Brooks, who wrote, directed, and produced the film. Harkening back to the days of unbilled overdubs on musical movies of the 50's and 60's, Cisyk wasn't given credit on the soundtrack to the film, which actually rose to #17 on the album chart, nor the single, which was billed as "original cast", and climbed to #80 on the American pop chart. Kacey later had to sue for royalties from her performance...

At the same time, Brooks enlisted Christian music singer and daughter of pop icon Pat Boone Debby to record another version of the song, even going so far to using the same backing track on it. Boone's version got pushed on the radio (there were accusations of harassment of Cisyk by Brooks that he apparently took revenge on) and in a short minute the Boone take on it became the record-holding #1 song of the Hot 100 era, spending ten weeks at the top of the list. Boone won a Best New Artist Grammy Award solely from this, which was also nominated for Record of the Year (which went to the Eagles' "Hotel California") and shared Song of the Year honors with Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen" in 1978...

 

Twenty years later, LeAnn Rimes (on Boones record label Curb, no less) recreated the power-ballad for a new generation of listeners...

 Rimes' version of "You Light Up My Life" became her third top-40 pop hit in September of 1997, even as "How Do I Live" was still climbing the Hot 100. The song also went to #48 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart. The You Light Up My Life album spent two non-consecutive weeks at #1, going on to sell over four million copies. 

A second single from the set, new song "On The Side Of Angels", became a big country radio hit, peaking at #4 on Billboard's Country Singles chart.

Up tomorrow: Reggae singer goes Bacharach in time.