Songoftheday 5/5/21 - Hear my cries hear my call, lend me your ears see my fall...

 

 

"Come With Me" - Puff Daddy featuring Jimmy Page

from the album Godzilla: The Album (Original Soundtrack) (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 15

 

Today's song of the day comes from record label mogul turned rapper Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, whose first album under his own moniker, No Way Out, had spun off five big pop hits, with "Victory",  the double single "Been Around The World" and "It's All About The Benjamins", and two #1 singles in "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down" and "I'll Be Missing You". For his next move Combs contributed a song to the revamp of the monster movie Godzilla starring Matthew Broderick that was released in the late spring of 1998. "Come With Me" was dominated by a guitar riff taken from the classic rock anthem "Kashmir" by British hard rock heroes Led Zeppelin. In fact, Combs got Jimmy Page to perform on the record and giving him credit on the single, which gave the veteran guitarist his sole charting pop hit apart from his old group. With an orchestra backing up as well, this was a loud record, meant to compete with the roaring titular beast, and it made quite the impression, especially on those unfamiliar with the original Led Zep track. But when you break down Puff's verses, it amounts to a lot of bragging and chest-puffing as he gets more and more menacing trying to build to the end, but he really is being drowned out by the production here. As with most of his music videos, this is definitely over the top plus ten, as somehow he gets in an elevator that goes up and blasts through the roof, where somehow he turns into doves and falls to earth to perform on stage at the same time. But hey, it's MTV in the late 90s and anything goes. It became the second top-40 pop radio hit from the Godzilla movie after The Wallflowers' take on David Bowie's "Heroes"...

"Come With Me" became Combs' fourth top ten pop hit in July of 1998. The song also rose to #19 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, and topped their Rap Songs list for five weeks, but surprisingly didn't place on any of their rock radio tallies. Internationally, the single went to #1 in Iceland, and reached the top ten in the UK (#2), Ireland (#2), Switzerland (#2), Hungary (#2), Poland (#2), Germany (#3), Austria (#3), New Zealand (#3), Finland (#3), Belgium (#5W/#10F), Canada (#7), France (#8), the Netherlands (#8), Norway (#8), and Australia (#10). 

One more song from the soundtrack made the American airplay charts, and that was Rage Against The Machine's original "No Shelter", which placed on both the Mainstream (#30) and Alternative (#33) rock radio lists. Meanwhile, British alternative dance act Jamiroquai coasted to #22 on Billboard's Dance Club Play charts with "Deeper Underground", which also hit #1 in their native UK. 

As for Jimmy Page, while this was his sole charting pop hit in his name, he placed thirteen songs on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, including two #1 hits: "Pride And Joy" with David Coverdale (of Whitesnake) in 1993, and "Most High" with former bandmate Robert Plant in 1998. 

(6/10)

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Here's Combs and Page performing "Come With Me" live at the Net Aid charity concert in 1999 in New York City...

and lastly, this is "Kashmir", the song where Puff Daddy and Page took the guitar riff from...

Up tomorrow: R&B newcomer uses the microwave, perhaps.