Songoftheday 9/12/21 - I am here to tell you we can never meet again, simple really isn't it a word or two and then?

 

 

"Written In The Stars" - Elton John & LeAnn Rimes

from the album Elton John & Tim Rice's Aida (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #29 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from pop music legend Elton John, who in 1999 was given the Grammy Living Legend award for his iconic career work. Two years prior, Elton scored his "biggest hit" and one of the top-selling singles of all time with the Princess Diana tribute version of his "Candle In The Wind" paired with "Something About The Way You Look Tonight" from his The Big Picture album. Also that year, the stage musical adaptation of the Disney movie The Lion King, with music from Elton and lyrics from Tim Rice, debuted on Broadway, becoming a huge success, an earning him a Tony nomination. The singer/songwriter's next project would also be a musical that reunited Elton with Rice. A year before the show opened on Broadway, Elton recorded a "concept album" of the show, much like Jesus Christ Superstar did back in the day. Featuring a superstar lineup including Janet Jackson, Tina Turner, Sting, James Taylor, Boyz II Men, Shania Twain, and the Spice Girls, Elton performed on five of the album's fifteen tracks. One of those paired John up with country music singer LeAnn Rimes, who had herself last scored a hit with a song from a movie, "Looking Through Your Eyes" from the animated film Quest For Camelot. "Written In The Stars" comes in a crucial moment in act two of the musical, with doomed "Romeo & Juliet"-style lovers Radames (an Egyptian army captain) and Aida (a Nubian princess) finally proclaim their love that they will never get to express, as the former is slated to marry the daughter of the pharaoh and the latter was helping her father escape the Egyptian prison. The show is pretty romantically dark for this kind of commercial affair, and while the song in the perspective of the show fits well, separated from the context, and with a much older gay man and very younger ingenue teamed up on this fated love song is kind of jarring. The music video even confuses more by taking the Aida context completely away, having Elton and LeAnn as celestial watchers overseeing stories like Adam & Eve and Pocahontas and John Smith play out in soft-porn vignettes. Nevertheless, the song somehow brought Elton back into the pop top-40 for one last go...

"Written In The Stars" became Elton's fifty-seventh, and so far most recent, top-40 hit on the American Hot 100 chart in Billboard magazine in March of 1999, closing off a streak that started with 1970's "Your Song". The song was a decent hit at "adult contemporary" radio, spending a month (four weeks) at #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart, as well as placing at #36 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Elton's native Britain at #10, while reaching the top-40 in Italy (#18), Iceland (#20), Canada (#22), Austria (#28), and Switzerland (#34). The Aida concept album, released as the single was peaking in March of 1999, stopped at #41 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a half million copies. The Aida musical opened on Broadway in 2000, and won Elton John and Tim Rice a Tony Award for Best Original Score. The original cast album also won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album that same year. 

 

Another song from the show's concept album, "A Step Too Far", teamed Elton up with Heather Headley and Sherie Scott. The song went to #15 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary radio chart in America. 

Later in 1999, John continued his cinematic/stage streak with the soundtrack to the Albert Brooks movie The Muse, but that was all instrumental save the title track which didn't get any attention. The following year, though, the singer and Tim Rice came back together for yet another project, the soundtrack to the Dream Works animated film The Road To El Dorado. Two songs were hits on "easy listening" radio, with "Someday Out Of The Blue" peaked at #5 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart and nearly making the Hot 100 pop top-40 at #49. 

After the longest break between studio albums in his career so far, Elton returned in 2001 with his critically-acclaimed album Songs From The West Coast, which brought him back to the Billboard 200 top-40 at #15. Lead single "I Want Love", climbed to #6 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #28 on the Adult Top-40 radio list, while "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 in America. In the United Kingdom, the song peaked at #9. At the Grammy Awards in 2002, the album was nominated for Best Pop Album, which went to Sade for her Lovers Rock set. "I Want Love" was also up for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, which James Taylor won for his remake of his own "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" from jazz musician Michael Brecker's Nearness Of You album. A year later, the third single from the West Coast set, "Original Sin", also was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal, which went home with John Mayer for his "Your Body Is A Wonderland". 

Although Elton was generally absent from mainstream radio in America in 2002 and 2003, he still was a presence on the music scene, releasing his Greatest Hits 1970-2002 triple-disc set which went six times platinum and spent 141 weeks on the Billboard 200. A set of dance remixes of his debut hit "Your Song" went to #5 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. Meanwhile in the UK, a remake of "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word" by "boy-band" Blue which featured Elton topped that country's singles chart in 2002. A year later, another reincarnation, this time the disco-era nugget "Are You Ready For Love", also topped the British singles chart, as well as went to #1 on the American Dance Club Play list. 

The artist returned in 2004 with his 27th studio album Peachtree Road. First single "Answer In The Sky" put Elton back in the top ten at Adult Contemporary radio at #7. Also from the record the song "Electricity", from Elton's musical adaptation of Billy Elliott, landed Elton in the top ten in the UK (his most recent lead-artist placing) at #4. A year later, Elton finally scored his first and only "hit" on Billboard's Country Singles chart, with "Where We Both Say Goodbye" with Catherine Britt, which crested at #38. That same year, he was nominated for a Best Pop Vocal Collaboration Grammy Award with Ray Charles for their cover of Elton's "Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word" from Charles' final album Genius Loves Company, which lost to Charles' other collab with Norah Jones from the album "Here We Go Again". Elton's most recent Grammy nomination came in 2011 for that same category for "If It Wasn't For Bad" with Leon Russell, which went to Herbie Hancock, Seal, Pink, and others for "Imagine".

Since then, Elton has released three more studio albums, the most recent being Wonderful Crazy Night!, which went to #8 on the Billboard 200 in 2016. Two songs from the record made the Adult Contemporary radio chart, with "Looking Up" doing the best at #12. In 2019, a cinematic re-imagining of Elton's life, Rocketman, was released. The accompanying soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media (ironically, it was up alongside a new version of The Lion King), but lost out to Lady Gaga's redo of A Star Is Born. From the record the new song "I'm Gonna Love Me (Again)", sung by Elton with the film's star Taron Egerton, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.  That song went to #12 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, while the dance remixes got the track to #3 on the Club Play list. 

In 2020, Elton returned to the rock radio chart for the first time since 1992 with his featured stint on Ozzy Osbourne's "Ordinary Man" at #7. This year, he is about to release The Lockdown Sessions, a new studio record recorded during the COVID pandemic. And he's back on the charts with "Cold Heart" featuring dance-pop's current queen Dua Lipa, which is a mashing up Elton's "Sacrifice", "Kiss The Bride", and "Rocketman". The single is on the Hot 100, and up to #22 on the Adult Top-40 list and #12 on the Adult Contemporary radio chart, with a real chance to actually put Elton back in the Hot 100 top-40. We will see.

(5/10)

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Here's Elton and LeAnn performing "Written In The Stars" on The Today Show in 1999...

Rimes included an alternate version of "Written In The Stars" on her 2001 album I Need You which has the pair reversing roles...

 

Here's a snippet of the Broadway version with Heather Headley and Adam Pascal...

 And lastly, the pair on VH1 Divas Live '99...

Up tomorrow: A Detroit rapper introduces himself.