Songoftheday 4/24/21 - Think it's time we got this straight sit and talk face to face, there is no way you could mistake him for your man are you insane?
"The Boy Is Mine" - Brandy & Monica
from the albums Never Say Never (Brandy) and The Boy Is Mine (Monica) (both 1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (thirteen weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 27
Today's song of the day comes from two young stars of R&B in the 1990's going by just their first names, Brandy and Monica. In the spring of 1996, Brandy went all the way to #2 on the Billboard magazine Hot 100 pop chart with "Sittin' Up In My Room" from the Waiting To Exhale film, while in 1997 Monica hit #4 there with her contibution to the movie Space Jam, "For You I Will". As each singer was preparing their critical second albums, Brandy recruited Monica for the lead single that would eventually appear on both their releases. The result was "The Boy Is Mine", written by Brandy with producer Rodney Jenkins and his brother Freddie, LeShawn Daniels, and Japhne Tejeda, with Jerkins producing Brandy's vocals and Dallas Austin handling Monica's. The sassy but subdued catfight over a man in the lyrics was handled with a million times more nuance and believability than Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney's "The Girl In Mine" from a decade and a half prior. While neither tries to oversing the other on the track, there is definitely an equal back and forth between the women that elevates this track beyond the usual petty squabbles of the youth. With the music video slyly slipping in clips from the Jerry Springer Show, the track became an immediate hit, and the biggest for both women...
"The Boy Is Mine" spent a bakers dozen of weeks at the top of the American pop chart starting in June of 1998. The song also topped Billboard's R&B chart for eight weeks. Internationally, the single went to #1 in Canada, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, and reached the top ten in the UK (#2), France (#2), Ireland (#2), Norway (#2), Belgium (#2W/#4F), Iceland (#2), Australia (#3), Sweden (#3), Switzerland (#3), Denmark (#3), Greece (#4), Germany (#5), Austria (#6), and Italy (#10). Brandy and Monica's respective albums were released within the same week in July, with Brandy's peaking at #2 and Monica's coming in at #8, and the former selling over five million copies and the latter moving three. At the Grammy Awards in 1999, "The Boy Is Mine" was nominated for three trophies, winning Best R&B Duo/Group Vocals, and in the running for Best R&B Song (which went to Lauryn Hill for "Doo Wop") and Record of the Year (which Celine Dion took home for "My Heart Will Go On"). Brandy's Never Say Never album was also up for Best R&B Album, losing to Hill again for her Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill set.
(10/10)
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Here's the pair singing together at the MTV Music Video Awards in 1998, which allegedly had the pair physically fighting before the show...
In 2001, remixers the Stuntmasterz reworked the song into the mashup "The Ladyboy Is Mine", which went to #10 on the British singles chart...
The pair performed the song for only the second time live at this concert in 2008...
In 2010, the musical show Glee had Amber Riley and the late Naya Rivera take on the song. The single went to #76 on Billboard's Hot 100...
And I'll leave with the pair on the legendary Verzuz series...totally awks.
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