Today's song of the day comes from country music singer Faith Hill, who made her crossover to the mainstream complete with her second top ten pop hit "This Kiss" in the autumn of 1998. The second song from her Faith album promoted to radio was another duet with husband Tim McGraw, "Just To Hear You Say That You Love Me". Although it was written by song doctor supreme Diane Warren and of equal quality to their pop top ten first go-around "It's Your Love", since it wasn't released as a retail single, it wasn't able to place on Billboard magazine's official pop Hot 100 chart. It did spend two weeks at #3 on the music business trade bible's Country Songs radio chart, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, losing out to the stunt record "Same Old Train" by Marty Stuart and twelve other artists (who probably all voted for themselves). At first, the same chart fate was happening to Faith's third offering from Faith, "Let Me Let Go". Written by Steve Diamond and Dennis Morgan, and produced by Hill with Dan Huff, the midtempo ballad has Hill on the other side of a relationship, knowing that it's over and asking for release so she can heal and get on with her life. But it looks like he's moved on already, and it's actually her own self and keeps hanging on. It's a type of song Hill masters at, and with Vince Gill's angelic voice providing harmony, "Let Me Let Go" hit hard on the heartstrings. It was a big success at country radio, and during that time, Billboard finally changed its rules allowing album cuts to place on the Hot 100 chart with radio points alone, and this was the biggest of the country hits at the time to benefit from this, entering the top 40 for a few weeks...
"Let Me Let Go" became Faith's third top-40 pop hit in December of 1998. The song spent a week at #1 on Billboard's Country Songs chart; one of the reasons it was in the top-40 though was it caught on with "easy listening" pop stations, where it peaked at #10 on their Adult Contemporary radio list. Internationally the single was a minor hit in the UK at #72. At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "Let Me Let Go" was nominated for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, losing out to Shania Twain for "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!" (she would make up for that the following year, though).
The next single from Faith, "Love Ain't Like That", surprisingly missed the country top ten at #12 (only her second single out of 14 to miss), and stopped at #68 on the pop Hot 100. Hill did better with the fifth release, the stellar track "The Secret Of Life" written by Gretchen Peters, which went to #4 at country radio, and just missed the pop Top-40 at #46. Faith will be back and back big to this series.
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For the Adult Contemporary radio market, Hill recorded a new version of the song with producer David Foster...
Faith performed "Let Me Let Go" at the 2000 Grammys, and used the Foster arrangement, even though the song was nominated in the country category...
Lastly, here's Faith in concert from her When The Lights Go Down live release in 2003...
Up tomorrow: Not-out-yet country singer makes assumptions.
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