Songoftheday 6/21/21 - Baby I really know by now, since we met that day you showed me the way...

 

 

"Because Of You" - 98 Degrees

from the album 98 Degrees and Rising (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #3 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 19

 

Today's song of the day comes from the male pop vocal group 98 Degrees, who scored their first hit in the autumn of 1997 with the ballad "Invisible Man".  The following year, the group teamed up with pop/soul legend Stevie Wonder for the song "True To Your Heart" from the Disney animated movie Mulan, which was a top-40 hit in the Netherlands (#16) and Switzerland (#25) and reached #51 in the UK. That fall, the foursome returned with the lead single from their sophomore effort 98 Degrees and Rising. "Because Of You", written and produced by the Swedish team of Anders Bagge, Arnthor Birgisson, Christian Karlsson, and Patrick Tucker, was a textbook example of "boy-band" ballad, a midtempo refection on where they as a man have gone wrong and needed their woman, aka the prospective audience, back. Trading lead vocals between Nick Lachey and Jeff Timmons, the infectious nugget of pop doesn't miss a step emotionally to show any cracks, but it doesn't matter - their should-be-criminal looks and bared biceps pick up any resistance for their girl (or more likely gay boy) audience. The video even clicks off all the boy-band boxes, with the scene transitions culminating in a not-for-the-queasy shot on top of the Golden Gate Bridge...

"Because Of You" landed 98 Degrees their first top ten pop hit in November of 1998. Internationally, the single rose to #7 in Canada, and reached the top-40 in the UK at #36. The 98 Degrees and Rising album, released in October of that year, went to #14 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to move over four million copies. They will be back to this series.

(6/10)

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Here's the boys appearing live on The View to promote the single..

and the group reunited in 2017 on Good Morning America...

And lastly, a special "quarantine" performance during the pandemic in 2020...

Up tomorrow: Rapper becomes a hip-hop Avenger.