Songoftheday 8/14/21 - From the day we met you made me forget all my fears, you knew just what to say and you kissed away all my tears...
"Wrong Again" - Martina McBride
from the album Evolution (1997)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1
Today's song comes from country singer Martina McBride, who had been a successful artist in her genre during the first part of the 1990's. In 1997, her collaboration with pianist Jim Brickman, "Valentine", reached the halfway point on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 pop chart at #50, opening her up to a whole different audience. That song would also appear on her fourth album Evolution, as well as the "B-side" of the single for "Broken Wing", which topped the Country Airplay chart as well as going to #61 on the Hot 100. That song was actually the second single from Evolution; the first, "Still Holding On", a superstar pairing with Clint Black that inexplicably stalled right under the top ten at #11, but garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, which Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood took home for "In Another's Eyes". The fourth single from the set, the bouyant "Happy Girl", spent two weeks at #2 on the Country Airplay chart in the spring of 1998. Also that year, her duet with Bob Seger from the movie Hope Floats, "Chances Are" (not the Johnny Mathis classic but a Seger original), went to #23 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart.
By the time that it came for Martina's fifth release from the record, Billboard would change its rules to allow album cuts not released as retail "singles" to place on the Hot 100, resulting in a lot more representation from country songs which mostly didn't get put out that way. "Wrong Again" was written by veteran songwriter Cynthia Weil along with Tommy Lee James, and produced by Martina with Paul Worley. A heartbreak ballad that starts out optimistically as Martina sings about the promise of a new love, only to throw the title in there at the end of the verse. On the second, her friends are trying to convince her that he will come around, only to be thrown that "wrong again" at the end. But in the third verse, there's a twist, as she's wallowing in her sorrow, thinking that no one will be there to love her again, and there, the final rewarding "wrong again" appears as a welcome hug. It's masterfully simple songwriting, and Martina delivers it with such a clear but emotive voice that it just tugs your heartstrings every which way. It should did mine...
"Wrong Again" gifted Martina her first top-40 Hot 100 hit in January of 1999. The song spent a week at #1 on Billboard's Country Airplay chart, her third on that list. Internationally, the single went to #5 on the Canadian Country chart. The Evolution album, released back in August of 1997, eventually peaked at #24 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #4 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over three million copies. But that album (and Martina) won't be done yet in this series.
(9/10)
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Here's Martina going on the TNN cable network to promote the single...
Next up, at the Country Music Awards in 1998, where she was nominated for Female Vocalist of the Year...
And lastly, in concert in Switzerland in 2012...
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