Songoftheday 4/5/21 - I see the heavens each time that you smile, I hear your heartbeat just go on for miles...

 

 

"Looking Through Your Eyes" / "Commitment" - LeAnn Rimes

from the albums Quest For Camelot (Original Soundtrack) and Sittin' On Top Of The World (both 1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 21

 

Today's song(s) of the week come from singer LeAnn Rimes, who had a very fruitful second half of 1997, with one of the biggest pop hits of all time with "How Do I Live", along with a top-40 hit cover of the ballad "You Light Up My Life", both from her #1 album You Light Up My Life: Inspirational Song.  The former was supposed to have been appearing in the movie Con Air, and a year later, she did get a song on a soundtrack, albeit from and animated film. Quest For Camelot was a Warner Brothers production (who had been very successful with Space Jam) that was loosely based on the Knights of the Round Table story of Medieval England. The song LeAnn recorded, "Looking Through Your Eyes", was written by the power coupling of David Foster and Carole Bayer Sager, but instead of it being produced by Foster, it was produced by LeAnn's father Wilbur. The result was a by-the-books love ballad in the Disney tradition, but far too treacly in arrangement for country radio to get on board with. That was okay, her new expanded older-skewing "easy listening" audience and radio took up the slack, and Rimes found herself again in the higher reaches of the pop chart, most likely because of her stunning voice...

"Looking Through Your Eyes" became LeAnn's fourth top-40 pop hit in May of 1998. The song also climbed to #4 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart. Internationally, the single was her third to reach the top-40 in the UK at #38. The Quest For Camelot soundtrack, which also featured Celine Dion's Golden Globe-winning song "The Prayer", rose to #117 on the Billboard 200 sales chart. "The Prayer" also made the Adult Contemporary list at #22.

Meanwhile, "Looking Through Your Eyes" was also included on Rimes' third studio album Sittin' On Top Of The World, which was released in May of 1998. For country radio, the "B-side" of the single, "Commitment", was promoted to radio. Written by Tony Cotton, Tony Marty, and Bobby Wood, the cosmopolitan country feel of the track was much more in tune with what Nashville was playing at the time, and the song brought her back to the top of that genre list...

"Commitment" climbed to #4 on Billboard's Country Songs chart in June of 1998. The Sittin' On Top Of The World record made it to #3 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, and #2 on the country music specific list.

The next release from Rimes' album, the mid-tempo "Nothin' New Under The Moon", followed into the country top ten at #10. Then came the extreme traditional "These Arms Of Mine", which just missed the country radio top-40 at #41. Lastly, the Diane Warren composition "Feels Like Home" was promoted to easy listening radio, when it rose to #17 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary tally.

Looking Through Your Eyes: (5/10)      Commitment: (7/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

The version of "Looking Through Your Eyes" that appeared in the Quest For Camelot movie itself was sung by Andrea Corr of the Irish pop band the Corrs and country singer Bryan White...

Next up is Rimes' performing "Commitment" live in Las Vegas...

and finally, on her AOL Sessions gig in 2003...

Up tomorrow: Veteran guitar man sees his dad.