Robbed Hit of the Week 2/22/21 - Richard Marx & Donna Lewis' "At The Beginning"...

 

 

"At The Beginning" - Richard Marx & Donna Lewis

from the album Anastasia (Original Soundtrack) (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45 (one week)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the animated movie Anastasia, which reimagined the story of the Grand Duchess Anastacia Nikolaevna, whose family were slaughtered during the Russian Revolution in 1917. There was a rumor going around (fake news, if you will) that Anastacia escaped the capture of the family, and this story held on for decades. A film was made from this starring Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner in 1956, and it's from this adaptation that the 1997 animated film draws from. Marketing itself like a Disney film (which a lot of studios did in the 80's and 90's), the new movie sported a soundtrack laid out like a musical (like Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin). And of course there would be a "ringer" ballad that would anchor the credits and feature popular singers instead of the voiceover cast. In this case the song was "At The Beginning", which was co-written by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, who in the 1980s had a hugely successful Broadway run with the show Ragtime, as well as Once On This Island which had a big revival in 2017. They wrote the song with one of the singers, Richard Marx, who had fully transitioned into an "easy listening" artist by then. His last album Flesh And Bone's big single, "Until I Find You Again", was a top-3 smash at that format, but missed the mainstream pop top-40 by a couple of notches in the spring of 1997. Marx made this a duet with Welsh songstress Donna Lewis, who had a massive pop hit with her debut single "I Love You Always Forever", spending nine weeks at #2 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100. But her own follow-up single "Without You" stopped short of the top-40 at the beginning of 1997. Nevertheless, they both were known entities on pop radio, and expectations were that this sweeping ballad, produced by Trevor Horn (Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Yes) of all people, would be embraced the same as the older-skewing likes of Peabo Bryson and Elton John. The lyrics even gave a nod to Donna's previous hit in the "now and forever" repeated in the chorus...

"At The Beginning" did become another big hit at "easy listening" radio, spending six weeks at #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart. However the single stopped a handful of slots short of the mainstream pop Top 40 in January of 1998. Perhaps it was fate, since radio seemed to have room for only one big ballad from a movie, and the song that kept them from #1 at AC, Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic, filled that bill already. The Anastasia soundtrack also frustratingly peaked right outside the top-40 at #41 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, though it did go on to sell over a half-million copies (I know, modest compared to Disney, but still). On awards season, "At The Beginning" was passed up though two other songs from the film got nominations. "Journey To The Past" got an Oscar nods (which naturally went to "My Heart Will Go On"), while at the Golden Globes "Once Upon A December" and "Journey To The Past" were up for Best Original Song (which again Celine took home). Both songs were sung in the movie by Broadway legend Liz Callaway, though "pop" versions from Aaliyah and Deana Carter appeared in the credits and on the soundtrack. The score, by David Newman, was also up for an Oscar for Best Musical/Comedy Score (not competing with Titanic), but again lost to The Full Monty by former Art Of Noise member Anne Dudley.

(5/10)