Songoftheday 6/4/21 - Take me back in the arms I love, need me like you did before...

 

 

"To Love You More" - Celine Dion

from the albums Let's Talk About Love (US edition, 1997) & Live a Paris (International, 1996)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: ineligible to chart

Billboard Hot 100 Airplay peak: #11 (one week)

Weeks in the Airplay Top-40: 19

 

Today's song of the day comes from Celine Dion, whose fifth English-language album Let's Talk About Love got a rocky start when the lead single "Tell Him", a duet with music icon Barbra Streisand, stiffed, but quickly recovered when the follow-up, the "titanic" hit from Titanic "My Heart Will Go On", became her signature song, won a bunch of Grammy Awards, and hit #1 in the beginning of 1998. For the third offering to American radio, Dion's record company went and mined a song that originally appeared on the Japanese version of the singer's third album in 1995, Colour Of My Love. "To Love You More", written by moonlighting alcohol executive Edgar Bronfman and produced by David Foster, was used in a Japanese "soap opera", and was a huge hit there. It also got on to the Asian version of her fourth album Falling Into You, and then finally as a bonus studio track on her mostly-French live album Live a Paris in Canada, the UK, and Europe, where it hit the top ten on the Canadian singles chart in the spring of 1997. Over a year later, included on the US lineup of Let's Talk About Love, the brash ballad begging her straying lover to stay got its time to shine on mainstream radio in the States. Japanese neo-classical act Kryzler & Kompany shine on this, though their contribution would be truncated for the U.S. version. Here's the original...

Since "To Love You More" wasn't commercially released as a retail "single", it wasn't able to place on Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart. However, the track got enough radio love to almost make it to the top ten of the airplay component of that tally in August of 1998. The song was massive on "easy listening" radio here, topping Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart for eight weeks, while scaling to #21 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format list. Internationally, besides reaching #1 in Japan in 1995, it hit #9 in Canada and #13 in Iceland in 1997.

While this would be Celine's last hit from the record in America, internationally, the track "Immortality" with the Bee Gees became a big worldwide success, reaching the top ten in Germany (#2), Austria (#2), Poland (#4), the UK (#5), Switzerland (#8), and Iceland (#8). It also made the top-40 in Ireland (#11), Sweden (#12), France (#15), Belgium (#15W/#48F), Spain (#23), Canada (#28), and Australia (#38). The song "Miles To Go (Before I Sleep)", written and produced by "Sunglasses At Night" artist Corey Hart, was a minor Canadian "easy listening" hit at #17. Lastly, "Treat Her Like A Lady", featuring the cover's original singer Diana King and R&B group Brownstone, became a top-40 hit in Iceland (#13), Austria (#16), the UK (#29), Spain (#38), and Ireland (#40). 

(7/10)

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Here's the shortened edit that hit American radio in 1998....

Next up. in concert in 1997 with violinst Taro Hakase from the record...

She also brought on Hakase a year later at the Juno Awards, Canada's Grammys...

and lastly, from her Vegas residency in 2003...

Up tomorrow: Seattle alternative rockers perch precariously.