Songoftheday 2/15/21 - Hello can you hear me? Am I getting through to you?
"Kiss The Rain" - Billie Myers
from the album Growing, Pains (1997)
Billboard Hot 100 peak; #15 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 18
Today's song of the day comes from British singer/songwriter Billie Myers, who started her music career rather later in life, landing a record deal in her late 20s in the late 1990s. Her debut single "Kiss The Rain" was written by Myers and producer Desmond Child along with Eric Bazilian from the rock band the Hooters (and also a writer for Cyndi Lauper). A midtempo adult-pop song that is presumably confronting a distant (and possibly ex) lover, she implores them to go outside and I guess show affection towards the weather instead of her (like a lot of Child's work, some of it just sounds nice and doesn't make sense). It gives major trying to be Alanis Morissette vibes. Nevertheless, Myers has a great voice, and it was a smooth-sounding record that pleased the older pop-listening crowd enough to make it her biggest hit...
"Kiss The Rain" became Myers' first and only top-40 pop hit in February of 1998. The song climbed to #6 on Billboard magazine's older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart, and stopped at #28 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list. Internationally, the single went all the way to #2 in Canada, #4 in her native Britain, and #10 in Ireland, and reached the top-40 in Italy (#12), Sweden (#15), and Iceland (#20). Her debut album, Growing,Pains, went to #91 on the American Billboard 200 sales chart.
Billie's next single, "Tell Me", missed the pop Hot 100 in the U.S., but placed at #25 on Billboard's Adult Top-40 chart, and was her second British Top-40 hit at #28. Myers' second album, Vertigo, paired the singer up with producer David Tyson, who was successful with another previous soul/rock artist, Alannah Myles, but this disc stiffed everywhere despite being quite solid. Since then, she has come out of the closet as bisexual, and released the stand-alone single "Just Sex" in 2005, which scored Billie a top ten hit on the Dance Club Play chart at #8. A baker's dozen of years later, Billie returned with her third and most recent set, Tea & Sympathy, which was released independently in 2013. It included her second club hit from 2010, "Wonderful", which almost made the Dance top ten at #11.
(5/10)
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And live in concert in 2009...
Up tomorrow: Young R&B singer wants to decelerate.
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