Robbed hit of the week 10/25/21 - Lila McCann's "With You"...

 

 

"With You" - Lila McCann

from the album Something In The Air (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #41 (three weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from singer Lila McCann, who grew up in the outer suburbs of Seattle, Washington, where she began her country music career singing with her father as a child. Signed to Asylum Records in Nashville, McCann released her debut album Lila in 1997, when she was just sixteen years old. Lead single "Down Came A Blackbird" was a moderate hit at country radio at #28, but the stellar debut gave Lila momentum for her second release "I Wanna Fall In Love". That song became her biggest success on the format, spending three weeks at #3 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart. The Lila album went to #86 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #8 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. 

 

In 1999, McCann returned with her sophomore set, Something In The Air. With bright colors and a new hairstyle that makes her look more than a passing glance like Britney Spears on her album cover, the lead single "With You" also aims for a younger market. Written by Robin Lee Bruce and Matt Hendrix, it's a simple upbeat love song with your general greeting card platitudes, but McCann delivers them with a fresh-faced sincerity that's fitting her younger years. The music video could also be taken from a Britney-style storyboard, as a bunch of teenagers choose to get themselves locked in a museum overnight for some innocent shenanigans...

 

 

While "With You" scored Lila her second top ten hit on Billboard's Country Singles chart, the song frustratingly stalled right under the Hot 100 crossover chart at #41 for three weeks in June of 1999. It actually did better since it was available as a commercially-available "single", which sold pretty decent. Internationally, the single made it to #7 on the Canadian Country Single chart. The Something In The Air album, released in March of that year, beat her debut by a notch at #85 on the Billboard 200, while climbing to #5 on the Country Albums sales tally, though selling about half as much. 

Her followup single, "Crush", went the same perky teen route, but stalled down at #41 on the Country Singles chart.. The same fate fell on the next two releases from the album, with "I Will Be" stopping at #47 and "Kiss Me Now" peaking at #60. 

 

With Asylum Records absorbed by Warner Brothers Nashville, McCann came back in 2001 with her third effort, Complete. However, it looked like country radio passed her by, as lead single "Come A Little Closer" also stopped under the top-40 on the Country Singles chart at #43. The Complete album went to #152 on the Billboard 200, and #18 on the Country Albums list (still not bad considering the poor radio reception of the single), and McCann left the label shortly after.

Going indie with Broken Bow Records, Lila returned in 2005 with "Go Easy On Me", which was a minor hit on country radio at #53. That same year, she appeared on new age pianist Jim Brickman's Disney Songbook album, and their "I'm Amazed", one of the two non-Disney movie songs on the record, got to #59 on the Country Singles chart. Another single on Broken Bow, "That's What Angels Do", was her most recent appearance on the chart, spending a week at #60. 

 

McCann's most recent EP, Paint This Town, was released in 2017. In 2019, McCann came out as lesbian and married to a woman, and has pretty much left the music world for the real estate business, but still performs at LGBTQ events and in the duo Hateful Grey.

 

(6/10)