Robbed hit of the week 2/1/21 - Gary Barlow's "So Help Me Girl"...

 

 

"So Help Me Girl" - Gary Barlow

from the album Open Road (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44 (three weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from British singer Gary Barlow, who rose to massive fame in Europe as a member of the British "boyband" vocal group Take That. While the group racked up thirteen top ten hit singles in the UK, including eight that went to #1, in America they only managed one charting single, but at least with that one, "Back For Good", they got as high as the top ten in the autumn of 1995. But that momentum didn't last, as member Robbie Williams exited the act shortly thereafter, and after a greatest hits album and that eighth UK #1, a remake of "How Deep Is Your Love", the rest called it quits, with each pursuing a solo career. Barlow, who had sung most of the lead parts for Take That, as well as written some songs on their albums, was probably the most highly-anticipated (well, besides Robbie) breakout from the act. 

Gary released his debut solo single "Forever Love" in the summer of 1996, which landed at #1 on the British singles chart as well as top ten in most of Europe. That was followed by "Love Won't Wait", which was a tossaway from Madonna and producer/remixer Shep Pettibone that didn't make her Bedtime Stories album. That record scored a second #1 for the singer, For the third release from the record, and the first put out in America, Gary remade a country hit single from 1995 from honky-tonk singer Joe Diffie. "So Help Me Girl", written by Howard Perdew and Andy Spooner, was from his album Third Rock From The Sun. Barlow, with soft-pop master David Foster producing, turned the country ballad into a boyband style lady magnet, which that snap-track that today's country is embracing wholeheartedly. He's in fine vocal form, and the harmonies are pristine, but maybe the whole affair is a bit too pristine and cold, especially compared to Diffie's warm and emotional original...

Barlow's version of "So Help Me Girl" was a big hit on "easy listening" radio in the States, spending two weeks at #3 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary airplay chart, with a hefty 26 weeks on that list. However, the song stalled just short of the top-40 on their official Hot 100 pop chart in November of 1997. Internationally, the single just missed the top ten in the UK at #11, and got to #14 in Ireland. 

Gary's follow-up release in the U.S. was "Superhero", a song that wasn't on the British/European version of the album, which he wrote with future starmaker Max Martin along with producer Kristian Lundin and Joylon Skinner. While it landed another moderate hit on the Adult Contemporary format at #23, it missed the big pop chart, "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #106. With the Open Road album not making the Billboard 200 sales list in America, his record company pretty much gave up breaking Gary big here.

Meanwhile, in the UK and Europe his debut was still going strong, with fourth single and title track "Open Road" returning Barlow to the British top ten at #7. Another cut from the record, a remake of the 1970s disco classic "Hang On In There Baby", was a minor hit in Germany at #69, but released in America tanked without a notice. The Open Road album topped the sales chart in the UK as well as in Ireland.

Things went a little sour on the release of Barlow's sophomore solo effort, Twelve Months, Eleven Days in 1999. With Robbie Williams now outshining him on the radio (and in the tabloids, for better or definitely for worse), the album sold a fraction of his debut, while lead single "Stronger", a blatant tie-in to the emerging Latin pop-dance fad made popular by the likes of Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias, stalled down at #16 on the British singles list. For a while, Gary withdrew from the limelight for years.

But with everything working in circles, the pull of nostalgia for Take That, fueled by a TV documentary on the group, led to their reunion (without Williams) in 2005. In the late 2000s, they released three massively successful albums, the third even bringing on Robbie, who reconciled with Gary during that time. In fact, Barlow's first billing in eleven years was a collaboration with Williams, "Shame", which went to #2 on the British chart in 2010. Since then, he's had a "Phil Collins"-style career, releasing both records with Take That as well as his own solo material. In 2012, his benefit single "Sing" went to #1 in the UK, and the following year, Gary took "Let Me Go" to #2. He also became a fixture on television as one of the judges on the singing competition X Factor UK.

 

His most recent solo album, Music Played By Humans, came out in the fall of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which happened to claim the life of Joe Diffie that year. The record went to #1, his third after Open Road and Sing, while single "Elita" with Michael Buble and Sebastian Yatra, was a moderate radio hit in Britain. 

(6/10)

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For contrast, here's the original version from the late Joe Diffie from 1995. The country music community really lost a legend with his passing from COVID-19 last year. His version went to #2 on Billboard's Country Singles chart, and #84 on the pop Hot 100. (His version is a 9 out of 10.)

and here's Gary performing "So Help Me Girl" live on Japanese television...

 

And lastly, there was an alternate version of the music video for "So Help Me Girl" shot for the American MTV crowd...