Songoftheday 1/29/22 - These times are troubled and these times are good, and they're always gonna be they rise and they fall...
"When I Said I Do" - Clint Black and Lisa Hartman Black
from the album D'Electrified (1999)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 4
Today's song comes from Clint Black, who was born down the New Jersey shore but was brought up in Texas, where he went from being in a band with his siblings (as a lot of country singers do) before starting off on his own music career. Hooking up with fellow songwriter Hayden Nicholas, Black was signed to RCA Nashville Records, where he released his debut album Killin' Time in 1989. That album was one of the keystone works of that year, spinning off four #1 country radio hits with "A Better Man", "Killin' Time", "Nobody's Home" (which took three weeks at the top), and "Walking Away". Three of those four sported music videos, and his incredibly handsome face and soothing baritone sold many a people (included me) watching TNN and CMT on cable televsion. The Killin' Time album went all the way to #1 on Billboard magazine's Country Albums chart, and #31 on the Billboard 200 all-genre sales tally. The set spent over two years on the chart and went on to sell over three million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 1990, "A Better Man" was nominated for Best Country Song, losing to veteran Rodney Crowell for his "After All This Time". "Killin' Time" was also up for Best Male Country Vocal Performance, which went to Lyle Lovett for his Lyle Lovett and His Large Band album.
Black quickly returned later that year with his sophomore effort Put Yourself In My Shoes, which also topped the Country Albums chart, the last time he would do so. The record hit #18 on the Billboard 200, and again sold over three million copies. Out of the four charting singles two of them, "Loving Blind" and "Where Are You Now", went to #1 on Billboard's Country Singles chart. That was followed by The Hard Way in 1992, which was Clint's highest-charting album and sole top ten on the Billboard 200 at #8. The third single from the set, "When My Ship Comes In", returned the singer to #1 on the country radio chart.
Clint's fourth release, No Time To Kill, came out in 1993, and the lead single from the set, the "event" duet "A Bad Goodbye" with Wynonna Judd, not only spent a week at #2 on the Country Singles chart, but was his first to hit the crossover "pop" Hot 100, nearly making the top-40 at #43. The song was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration, which went to Reba McEntire and Linda Davis for their equally epic "Does He Love You". The fourth of five top ten hits from the record, "A Good Run Of Bad Luck" from the movie Maverick, kept Black's record of having at least one #1 country hit from each album intact. His next album, One Emotion, also scored a single #1 out of five top ten hits with "Summer's Comin'" in 1995.
The following year, Black released his first Greatest Hits collection, which was his sixth platinum album (selling over a million). Two new songs were tacked on, with "Like The Rain" going to #1 for three weeks, and got nominated for Best Country Male Performance, which Vince Gill took home for "Worlds Apart" in his own five-year winning streak. 1997 brought Clint's sixth studio effort Nothin' But The Taillights, which was his first non-holiday set to miss the Billboard 200 top-40 at #43. Also, lead single "Still Holding On", an attempt at another "event" duet like his success with "A Bad Goodbye", this time with vocal powerhouse Martina McBride, became Clint's first single to miss the top ten on the Country Singles chart, albeit by a hair at #11. It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, losing to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood for their equally dramatic "In Another's Eyes". He followed with another ballad, "Something That We Do", which did get a better reception, spending three weeks at #2 on Billboard's Country Singles chart, and landed his second appearance on the pop Hot 100 at #76. Clint got his second Grammy Country Male Vocal nomination in a row, again losing to Vince Gill for his "Pretty Little Adriana". The consolation was that Black finally won a Grammy (his only win) for being part of the all-star collaboration on "Same Old Train" from the Tribute To Tradition various artist compilation. Clint's momentum picked up, scoring two #1 hits with the next two singles from the record, "Nothin' But The Taillights" and "The Shoes You're Wearing". The former was also up for the Best Male Country Vocal Grammy category the following year, again losing to Vince Gill for "If You Ever Have Forever In Mind".
In the autumn of 1999, Clint put out his seventh studio album (which included a Christmas set) D'Electrified. Again he went for another "event" power-ballad, but this time instead of a country A-lister, Black enlisted his wife Lisa Hartman Black. Lisa is mostly known as an actress, starting out as the titular character on the Bewitched spin-off Tabitha in 1977, although she also pursued music, releasing five albums in the 70s and 80s that went absolutely nowhere. But what Hartman was most famous for was her role as Ciji Dunne and then Cathy Geary Rush (yes, two different parts) on the night-time soap opera Knots Landing. Clint and Lisa had been married since his first album's success, but this was the first time she sung on his records. The result, "When I Said I Do", written and produced by Clint, was tailor-made for weddings and their receptions, basically expands on the normal betrothal vows in the "for better or worse" and all of that. It's even done as a waltz in 3/4 time, to make it easier for "first dances", but at least the pair definitely have natural chemistry between them, and Lisa holds her own vocally in the song, though she's merely a back-up singer (as opposed to what Wynonna and Martina did). And Clint is giving his strongest vocal performance in quite a while, and they were rewarded with his biggest crossover success...
Surprisingly, "When I Said I Do" was Clint's only top-40 crossover hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in December of 1999. Of course, his biggest country radio success came at the time when country radio airplay and lack of single release kept him from the list. The song became Black's thirteenth and so far final #1 hit on the Country Singles chart, where it stayed for two weeks. Internationally, the single also topped the Canadian Country chart. The D'Electrified album, released in September of that year, peaked at #75 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and #7 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over a half million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "When I Said I Do" was nominated for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, which went to the "Trio" of Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt for their cover of Neil Young's "After The Gold Rush".
The second single from D'Electrified was another collab, this time with singer/guitarist/country music veteran Steve Wariner, who has a career going back over a decade before Clint's. "Been There" climbed to #5 on the Country Singles chart, and just missed the Hot 100 top-40 at #44. That was followed by "Love She Can't Live Without", which stopped at #30 on the Country Singles list.
Clint and Lisa had their first child in 2001, and during that time he mostly withdrew from music, with RCA releasing a second Greatest Hits II album later that year as he left the label. The collection had another collaboration with Lisa, "Easy For Me To Say", which went to #27 on Billboard's Country Singles chart.
When Black returned to recording, it would be on his own label Equity, notably one of the first artist-driven ventures in the country music industry. After a ridiculous jingoistic novelty clout-grab on "Iraq and Roll", which thankfully even stalled under the top-40 on the Country Singles chart at #42, his next studio album, Spend My Time, was released in 2004. The record brought the singer back to the top-40 on the Billboard 200 at #27, while climbing to #3 on the Country Albums sales tally. Title track "Spend My Time" went as high at #16 on the Country Singles chart, his biggest hit on his own label. In 2004, Clint guested on Jimmy Buffett's version of "Hey Good Lookin'" from the latter's License To Chill album, which went to #8 on the Country Singles chart and #63 on the pop Hot 100 (though he wasn't listed in the credits). But his presence among other A-listers like Alan Jackson and George Strait got the record a Best Country Collaboration Grammy nomination, which went to Loretta Lynn and Jack White for their "Portland Oregon" (deservedly). Black released two more studio albums and an extended play (EP) set on Equity, with the EP giving Clint his most recent lead top-40 country hit with "The Strong One" at #37, followed by "Long Cool Woman" (a cover of the Hollies hit), which is his last to make the whole country chart at #58.
Cracker Barrel put out a collection of re-recordings of Black's songs called When I Said I Do including this one, which sold enough to be his latest placing on the Billboard 200 at #162 in 2013. Two years later, Clint signed with Thirty Tigers Records, and released On Purpose, which went to #13 on Billboard's Country Albums chart. His most recent album, Out Of Sane, was released in 2020 to little interest, sad to say, for such a great artist in country music, but that's how Nashville works.
(7/10)
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and lastly, in concert in 2021...
Up tomorrow: The rapper loves her hunks.
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