Songoftheday 10/3/21 - They kissed goodbye at the terminal gate, she said, "You're gonna be late if you don't go"...

 

 

"Wish You Were Here" - Mark Wills

from the album Wish You Were Here (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 3

 

Today's song comes from Mark Wills, who grew up in Georgia before moving back to his birth state of Tennessee to start his music career in the late 1990's. Signing with Mercury Nashville Records, Wills released his self-titled debut album in 1996. The lead single, "Jacob's Ladder" (not to be confused with the #1 pop hit from Huey Lewis & The News, was a success, climbing to #6 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart.  With a second top ten hit in its third single "Places I've Never Been" at #5 on the radio list, the Mark Wills album got to #38 on Billboard's Country Albums sales tally. 

Mark returned in 1998 with his sophomore effort, Wish I Was Here. The first single from the set, the love ballad "I Do (Cherish You)", spent two weeks at #2 on the Country Singles chart, while scoring the singer his first placing on Billboard's "pop" Hot 100 at #72. The song would hit the pop top-40 a year later with a version by boy-band 98 Degrees. That was followed by the anti-bullying screed "Don't Laugh At Me", which repeated the success of "I Do" at #2 on the Country Singles chart, and nearly the same on the Hot 100 at #73. But it was the third release and title track from the album that would be its biggest success. "Wish You Were Here", written by country music legend Bill Anderson, 80's genre hitmaker Skip Ewing, and Debbie Moore, the song tackles an even darker subject. Starting with a couple saying their goodbyes as the man leaves for a business trip, where he buys a foreboding postcard and mails it before his return flight ends in a crash. And no, this wasn't after 9/11, so it was innocent enough in its intentions, where the title ends up being a fatal play on words. It's spiritual without being heavy-handed, and while being Hallmark network-worthy in content, the song tells a story straight and with Wills' empathic delivery pulls the heart at the right amount...

"Wish You Were Here" became Wills' first #1 single on Billboard's Country Singles chart, and climbed to make his first song to make their Hot 100 pop chart in May of 1999. Internationally, the single peaked at #4 on the Canadian Country Songs list. The Wish You Were Here album, released a year prior in May of 1998, was the singer's first to make the Billboard 200 sales tally at #74, and his first top ten on the Country Albums list at #8, going on to sell over a million copies. 

A fourth single from the album, "She's In Love", was a top ten country radio hit at #7, while rising to #60 on the pop Hot 100. Mark will return to this series.

(7/10)

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Here's Mark performing "Wish You Were Here" on a television appearance...

Wills was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2018. Here he is this past July there on the celebration of the song's writer Bill Anderson's 60th year as a member...

Up tomorrow: R&B trio debut with a keyboard.