Songoftheday 7/17/21 - No mountain's too high for you to climb, All you have to do Is have some climbing faith oh yeah...

 

 

"I'm Your Angel" - Celine Dion & R. Kelly

from the albums These Are Special Times and R. (both 1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (six weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 15

 

Today's song of the day marked a week that changed the American pop charts more than any other time in the history of the rock and roll era. Up until then the "official" chart in this country, Billboard magazine's Hot 100, counted down the biggest singles of the week each week since 1958. And by "single" that means the commercial retail unit that had at least one hit and up to a couple "b-sides" that was available in stores, either in vinyl, cassette, or CD form. In the 1990s, the rise in the practice of record companies holding back a single release to goose the sales of the album had grown to the point where a big chunk of the biggest radio hits in America never appeared on the list, including No Doubt's "Don't Speak", the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris", and Will Smith's "Men In Black", all of which topped the airplay list for multiple weeks. In December of 1998, the music industry's trade bible finally succumbed to the pressure and revised their rules so that all tracks, whether sold as a single or not, were allowed to appear on the list. Mind you, the Hot 100 still tallied airplay AND sales, so a huge radio hit with no sales wasn't guaranteed a #1 placing, however it changed the way the chart was until the dawn of the internet sales and iTunes age. The first week in December, seventeen songs entered the top-40 that weren't there before, including songs I have featured already like "Iris", "Thank U" by Alanis Morissette, "My Favorite Mistake" by Sheryl Crow, and "I'll Never Break Your Heart" by the Backstreet Boys. But the song that entered all the way at #1 did it the "old-fashioned" way, with a single release that week that catapulted it to the top.

R. Kelly was riding high on the back of two big soundtrack hits that made the pop top ten in "I Believe I Can Fly" from Space Jam and "Gotham City" from Batman & Robin, the latter hitting the level in the summer of 1997. Meanwhile, Canadian pop diva Celine Dion also landed the biggest hit of her career with a movie theme, the #1 "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic, and well as a decent radio hit follow-up with "To Love You More" in the summer of 1998. For each artists upcoming studio albums, they joined forces in an unexpected duet that would appear on both releases, Kelly's sprawling double-disc opus R. and Dion's holiday album These Are Special Times. "I'm Your Angel", written and produced by Kelly, was a by-the-books Hallmark-movie-ready inspirational soft-pop song with greeting card lyrics that would be totally flaccid if not the talents of the pair, especially Celine, who tries her best to "sell" this drivel with swoops and vocal acrobatics. The disjointed music video, done "On My Own"-style to where you don't know if Kelly and Dion ever met, as he shows off her daughter to the public (probs to distract from his alleged cradle-robbing with Aaliyah from before). Nevertheless, Kelly was still on a high (everyone was focused on crucifying Michael Jackson at the time), and the superstar pairing got the reception it was aiming for saleswise, as the single, released just at the time when the charts changed, helped the moderate radio hit leap to the #1 spot, the last time for the both of them...

"I'm Your Angel" topped the pop chart in America for a month and a half starting in December of 1998 through January of the following year. The song was massive on "easy listening" radio, topping Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart for twelve weeks, as well as going to #28 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format list. It even made it to #5 on the R&B Songs chart, a testament to Kelly's pull on urban radio, scoring Dion's only top-40 hit in that genre. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in the UK (#3), New Zealand (#5), Switzerland (#7), Iceland (#7), Poland (#7), Ireland (#8), the Netherlands (#9), Sweden (#10), and Greece (#10). It also went to #11 in Dion's native Canada, and #14 in Germany. Dion's These Are Special Times album, released at the end of October of 1998, spent two weeks at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over five million records. Kelly's R. double disc set came out two weeks later, and also came in at #2, with over four million shipped (since "double albums" are counted double in sales, it was eight times platinum). Both records were kept from the top by Alanis Morissette's Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie in their debut weeks. At the Grammy Awards in 1999, "I'm Your Angel" was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Collaboration, the only one of the songs that even reached the pop top-40, but was beaten by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach's "I Still Have That Other Girl" (a blatant those not undeserved snub). The following year, the R. album was nominated for Best R&B Album (his first in that category), losing to TLC's Fanmail. 

Celine released "The Prayer" as her follow-up to "I'm Your Angel". Another duet, this time with pop-opera star Andrea Bocelli, was originally in the animated movie Quest For Camelot, and was nominated for a Best Original Song Oscar (which went to another animated film song, "When You Believe" from The Price Of Egypt). The song didn't place on the American Hot 100 at first, but got to #22 on the Adult Contemporary radio list. The record was nominated for the Pop Collaboration Grammy in 2000, which went to Santana and Rob Thomas for their massive hit "Smooth".  In 2008, a live version with Josh Groban did make the American pop list at #70.  Celine will return to the series.

As for R. Kelly, he'll be back on this series with more from R. soon. 

(3/10)

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Since all the revelations about Kelly came to a head, Dion has scrubbed the song from her own releases. Here she is in concert before then in 1999 with Barnev Valsaint performing the male parts...

Up tomorrow: Country crossover queen starts clocking time.