Songoftheday 11/22/21 - When you wake up in the evening and the day is shot, find yourself complaining about the things you ain't got...
"Smile" - Vitamin C featuring Lady Saw
from the album Vitamin C (1999)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5
Today's song comes from actress/singer Colleen Fitzpatrick, who grew up in the central New Jersey town of Old Bridge, before landing the role as Amber Van Tussle in John Waters' iconic movie Hairspray when she was sixteen years old. Graduating after that from New York University, Fitzpatrick and classmate Michael Kotch started the rock band Eve's Plum. They recorded two studio albums; the first, Envy, was released in 1993. A track from the record, "I Want It All", popped on to Billboard magazine's Alternative Rock radio chart for a week at #30 in 1994.
After the Eve's Plum gig fizzled out Fitzpatrick went out solo under the recording moniker Vitamin C, and eventually was signed to Elektra Records. Her first single with the new name in the summer of 1999 was "Smile", which featured Jamaican dancehall reggae singer Marion Hall, who records under the name Lady Saw. Lady Saw's debut album Lover Girl was released in 1994, and in 1997 and 1998 she had back to back top ten albums on Billboard's Reggae Albums chart with Passion (#8) and 99 Ways (#10). "Smile", written by Fitzpatrick with Josh Deutsch, with the latter producing the song with Garry Hughes, was the female version of the lite-ska rock made popular by the likes of Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth. In fact, the song sounds a lot like Sugar Ray's "Fly", but has "ultra-positive" lyrics that even water down the genre it derives from. Lady Saw's presence is supposed to give some creds to the record, but simply repeats the "don't worry, be happy" attitude. It's inoffensive, and the hook is memorable, but it sounds like a tv commercial right out of the gate...
"Smile" became the first top-40 pop hit for both Vitamin C and Lady Saw in August of 1999. Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit in New Zealand (#13), Iceland (#24), and Canada (#29). Her debut album, Vitamin C, was released in August as the song was peaking, and did surprisingly well, reaching #29 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and going on to sell over a million copies. Both Vitamin C and Lady Saw will return to this series.
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Here's Fitzpatrick performing "Smile" live in concert in 2000 in New Jersey...
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