Songoftheday 8/12/21 - Many nights we prayed with no proof, anyone could hear In our hearts a hopeful song we barely understood...
"When You Believe" - Whitney Houston & Mariah Carey
from the albums The Prince Of Egypt (Original Soundtrack), My Love Is Your Love, and #1's (all 1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #15 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7
Today's song pairs up two of the most prominent voices in popular music, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. In 1998, Whitney had actually been a bit absent from the charts, after her 1996 movie The Preacher's Wife had spun off a pair of hits with the Annie Lennox-written "Step By Step" and her top ten cover of "I Believe In You And Me". Meanwhile, Mariah Carey had been riding high with her Butterfly album, which produced two #1 singles in "Honey" and "My All" along with a decent radio hit in "Butterfly". Later in 1998, the two were brought in to record for the animated movie The Prince Of Egypt for Dreamworks Pictures. A religious telling of the Old Testament story in Exodus, the film version of the song featured Michelle Pfeiffer and Sally Dworsky. Pfeiifer did the voice work for Tzipporah, Moses' wife, while Dworsky filled in to sing the parts for Sandra Bullock's role of Miriam, his sister.
Originally written by Stephen Schwartz, Dreamworks commissioned a "pop radio" version that was produced by Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds with Carey and Houston. Surprisingly, his final result seems to water down the song, trading emotion and reverence for Whitney and Mariah's vocal acrobatics. Somehow the lyrics get lost and seem like greeting card sentiments, as each attempt to outsing the other...
Whitney and Mariah's version of "When You Believe" reached the pop top-40 in America in January of 1999. The song was a success on "easy listening" radio, spending a week at #3 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary radio chart, while popping on to the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format list at #37. It also made it to #33 on the R&B chart. Internationally, the single topped the chart in Hungary, and made the top ten in Spain (#2), Sweden (#2), Norway (#2), Iceland (#2), Switzerland (#2), Greece (#2), the UK (#4), the Netherlands (#4), Belgium (#4W/#5F), France (#5), Italy (#5), Austria (#6), Ireland (#7), Denmark (#7), Germany (#8), New Zealand (#8), and Finland (#10). It also went to #20 in Canada.
At the Grammy Awards, the song scored two nominations, losing Best Pop Vocal Collaboration to Santana's massive hit "Smooth", while the Best Song from a Motion Picture went to Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. But at the Academy Awards in 1999, "When You Believe" took home the Oscar for Best Original Song.
The song was released on three different albums at the close of 1998. First it was on one of what would be three tie-in's to the Prince Of Egypt movie, though the "Nashville" and "Inspirational" sets weren't really soundtrack albums per se. The main soundtrack went to #25 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and eventually sold over a half million copies. Whitney Houston's My Love Is Your Love record was her first to miss the top ten on that list at #13, but stayed on the chart for 87 weeks and sold over four million units. Lastly, Mariah included it on her greatest hit collection #1's, which peaked at #4 and moved over five million copies. Whitney, Mariah, AND the Prince Of Egypt soundtrack all will return very soon to this series.
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There was a second video done in a church and a pyramid set for an NBC special...
In 2007, British X Factor winner Leon Jackson released a cover of "When You Believe" with slightly different lyrics as his "winner's song", which topped tbe British singles chart for three weeks and also went to #1 in Ireland...
Finally, here is Mariah and Whitney at the Oscars, where the song won the trophy...
Up tomorrow: The Auto-tune heard around the world, as an icon returns to the top.
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