Songoftheday 11/2/21 - Come stop your crying it will be alright, just take my hand hold it tight...

 

 

"You'll Be In My Heart" - Phil Collins

from the album Tarzan (Original Soundtrack) (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #21 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from Phil Collins, who dominated the pop music landscape of the 1980's, but as the new decade passed was having a tougher go at it. His 1993 album Both Sides spun of two top-40 hits with "Both Sides Of The Story" and "Everyday", but both of them stopped in the 20's on Billboard's American Top-40. It got worse with his next effort Dance Into The Light, with the title track lead single failing to even reach the pop top-40 in 1996. Phil was nominated for a Grammy in 1997, but that was for his featured role on Quincy Jones' "Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me" from Jones' Q's Jook Joint album (the award went to Natalie Cole and the late Nat King Cole's "When I Fall In Love" for David Foster and Alan Broadbent). In 1998, Collins released his first retrospective, ...Hits, which returned Phil to the top ten on the Billboard 200 at #6, going on to sell over three million copies. 

The following year, Collins was hired on to write the non-score songs for the next Disney animated movie Tarzan, just like Elton John was conscripted to do for The Lion King. Ten songs of his would appear on the main soundtrack, supplemented by three selections from Mark Mancina's orchestral score. The big song from the film, "You'll Be In My Heart", appears twice, first in the version in the movie itself from Collins and Glenn Close, and then with the "pop version" from Collins alone in the end credits. Written by Phil who produced the track with Rob Cavallo, the song has the usual generic lyrics over swelling production that marks the Disney franchise, and just like "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" doesn't really have a sonic connection with the movie itself, though the lyrics tenuously tie to the need to separate from his jungle home to join the modern world. The music video, again directed by pop music veteran turned videography genius Kevin Godley, puts Phil in a series of split screen special effects shenanigans that proves ten times more interesting than the song itself...

"You'll Be In My Heart" returned Collins to the American pop Top-40 for the twenty-first and so far last time as a solo artist in July of 1999. The song was massive on "easy listening" radio here, topping Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart for nineteen weeks, spending 89 weeks on the list, while getting to #21 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, staying on that chart for a half year (26 weeks). Internationally the single reached the top-40 in New Zealand (#13), Canada (#16), the UK (#17), Germany (#20), Switzerland (#24), Austria (#30), Belgium (#34F), The Netherlands (#35), and Iceland (#35). The Tarzan soundtrack, released in May of that year, did much better as well, peaking at #5 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, spending over a year on the list and going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards, "You'll Be In My Heart" was nominated for Best Original Song from Visual Media, losing to Madonna for her Austin Powers hit "Beautiful Stranger", while the Tarzan soundtrack won for Best Original Soundtrack that year. But at the Academy Awards, it was "You'll Be In My Heart" that won Phil an Oscar for Best Original Song. 

The next single from the soundtrack, "Strangers Like Me", missed the Billboard Hot 100 entirely, but climbed to #10 on their Adult Contemporary chart, while going to #29 in Germany. That was followed by "Son Of Man", which was a minor hit in Germany (#68) and France (#96). Lastly, "Two Worlds", which was the main "theme" song for the movie, landed at #43 on the German singles chart in 2000. 

Collins returned with his next solo studio album, Testify in 2002. While the first single from the set, a remake of the 1978 hit from Leo Sayer "Can't Stop Loving You", continued his momentum at "easy listening" radio, topping Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart for a week and spending over a year on the list, and making it to #38 on their Adult Top-40 chart, mainstream stations in America mostly gave it a pass, and it stalled down at #76 on the Hot 100, his last appearance there to date. Still, the album made it to #30 on the Billboard 200, proof of his older and lingering fanbase's purchasing power. But internationally, the song actually did even better than Tarzan, reaching the top ten in France (#3), the Netherlands (#3), and Belgium (#7), and #28 in Phil's native Britain. 

Another attempt with a Disney soundtrack came with 2003's Brother Bear, with diminished results. Lead single "Look Through My Eyes" was even more generic than his work on Tarzan, but did get to #5 on the Adult Contemporary list, but missed the Hot 100, while the soundtrack itself got to #52 on the Billboard 200. A year later, the compilation Love Songs brought my favorite song of his, "Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart Away" from his 1982 album Hello...I Must Be Going!, on to the Adult Contemporary radio chart at #5. 

It would be eight long years before Collins came back with his eight studio album Going Back, a collection of cover songs from Motown and other soul standards, which is his most recent set at #34 on the Billboard 200. The title track "Going Back" (made famous by Dusty Springfield) went to #19 on the Adult Contemporary format, followed by his version of Martha & The Vandellas' "Love Is Like A Heatwave" at #28. After "retiring" multiple times, Collins' most recently reunited with his old band Genesis for a world tour that had been delayed to the pandemic but is supposed to restart up again this month in the U.S..

 

Of course, most recently, Phil had been in the news when he was evicting his third ex-wife who was squatting at his house after she married another guy. So there's that.

(4/10)

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Here's the version of the song that appears in the film itself, with Glenn Close lending her voice to Phil's...

Next up, Phil performing the song at the Academy Awards in 1999, where he won for Best Original Song...

Here's Phil appearing live on Swiss TV promoting the song...

Next, live in concert at Montreux...

Up tomorrow: Country ginger gets schooled on goodbyes.