Songoftheday 9/3/21 - out of the bearded barley nightly, beside the green green grass, Swing swing the spinning step you wear those shoes and I will wear that dress...

 

 

"Kiss Me" - Sixpence None The Richer

from the album Sixpence None The Richer (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 28

 

Today's song comes from the band Sixpence None The Richer, who came together in Texas in the beginning of the 1990s. Led by singer Leigh Nash and guitarist/songwriter Matt Slocum, the "Christian Rock" group cycled through a bevy of band members as they released their first two albums independently, beginning with The Fatherless and the Widow in 1994. Three years later, signed to the Squint imprint on Elektra Records, they put out their eponymous third album. The lead single from the set, "Kiss Me", written by Slocum and produced by Steve Taylor, strayed far into the secular world to produce a jangle-pop gem in the vein of the lighter versions of 10,000 Maniacs and the Cranberries. If fact, the song has more than a passing resemblance to the Maniac's "What's The Matter Here?". Down-playing their holy-roller ways for the mainstream public while still courting the religious market, the innocent twinge of "Kiss Me" was innocuous enough to get approval on all sides, and with a boost from the teen movie She's All That, it became a pop success...

 

 "Kiss Me" became Sixpence's first and biggest hit, climbing to the runner-up spot on the American pop chart in May of 1999. The song was also a huge hit on "easy listening" radio, spending nine weeks at #2 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format chart and taking five weeks at #2 on the Adult Contemporary radio list. Internationally, the single topped the charts in Canada and Australia, and made the top ten in the UK (#4), New Zealand (#4), Hungary (#4), Ireland (#6), Switzerland (#6), Germany (#7), Italy (#7), Austria (#7), Belgium (#7F/#12W), Greece (#7), and Norway (#8). The Sixpence None The Richer album, originally released in November of 1997, made it to #89 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, after topping their Christian Albums chart, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "Kiss Me" was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Vocal Performance, which Santana won for "Maria Maria". The year before, the Sixpence None The Richer album was nominated for Best Rock Gospel Album, which Ashley Cleveland took home for Are You There. They will return to the series.

(8/10)

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The first version of the song's music video was done in black and white in homage to French cinema, and it's better than the more popular Americanized one...

Yet another version had the same "bench" video but inserted clips from the movie She's All That for which the song got its boost....

Here's the band appearing on Conan O'Brien to promote the album...

and lastly, Nash with husband Stephen Wilson performing "Kiss Me" in 2019...

Up tomorrow: Country troubadour sings for the time being.