Robbed hit of the week 1/18/21 - Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand's "Tell Him"...

 

 

"Tell Him" - Celine Dion & Barbra Streisand

from the albums Let's Talk About Love and Higher Ground (both 1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart

Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #58 (one week)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from two of the most revered singers in the history of modern popular music, Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion. Streisand's career dates back to the beginning of the 1960s, and she proved her longevity by landing a top ten pop hit in the U.S. at the close of 1996 with her duet with Bryan Adams, "I Finally Found Someone". Meanwhile Celine was at the top of her career, with her 1996 album Falling Into You winning Album Of The Year at the Grammy Awards the following year, and spinning off a trio of top ten pop hits with her cover of Eric Carmen's "All By Myself", the Jim Steinman epic track "It's All Coming Back To Me Now", and the #1 single "Because You Love Me".In the autumn of 1997, Dion returned with her first preview of her fifth English album Let's Talk About Love. "Tell Him", a duet with Streisand, was written by Linda Thompson along with producers Walter Afanasieff and David Foster.  Framed as a conversation between two generations, with Celine questioning the future of her love, and Barbra encouraging her to grab on to her dreams and make the first move. It's quite an endearing piece, with both taking care not to oversing each other (at least in the beginning) despite the closeness to being like a Broadway song, which usually lends itself to bombastic performances. That they do in the final bridge before the closing chorus, which builds instead of flying it in your face (which is the norm these days)...

 

 Despite the star power names of Celine and Barbra together, pop radio simply balked hard on this, with it not even making the top half of Billboard magazine's Hot 100 pop airplay list in October of 1997, which caused Celine's label to pull the physical single (for once, a non-release more to avoid embarrassment than to goose sales). By that time, adult contemporary music was really getting shunned all around by mainstream stations, as the likes of Michael Bolton and Bryan Adams also saw big drops in radio interest as well. Nevertheless, Celine's Let's Talk About Love and Barbra's Higher Ground, released a week apart in November of 1997, both went to #1 on the Billboard 200 sales chart. Also, "Tell Him" was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Collaboration, which was won by John Lee Hooker and Van Morrison that her for "Don't Look Back". The Let's Talk About Love set was also up for Best Pop Album, which Madonna took home for her Ray Of Light record. Meanwhile, "Tell Him" spent a half year (26 weeks) on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, peaking at #5. Internationally the single fared much better, reaching the top ten in Ireland (#2), the Netherlands (#2), the UK (#3), Belgium (#3), France (#4), Spain (#4), Italy (#4), Switzerland (#4), Greece (#6), Norway (#8), Australia (#9), and Poland (#10). It even got as high as #12 in Canada (Celine's CAN CON status helped with radio there). The song may have seemed like a misstep at the time, but it's definitely nothing they should be ashamed of, and of course Celine would more than redeem herself on her next release just a month down the road.

(9/10)

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Here's Celine performing the duet in concert in New York, with Barbara's part coming in on video...

and I have to include as a bonus this version from Brian Justin Crum and Matt Bloyd from just this past December...