Songoftheday 1/4/22 -To just act like we never were to come around and not show hurt, how dare we greet by shaking hands...
"We Can't Be Friends" - Deborah Cox with R.L. from Next
from the album One Wish (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #8 (one week)
Weeks on the chart: 9
Today's song comes from Canadian singer Deborah Cox, who had scored a massive hit on both the pop and the R&B charts with the second single from her sophomore album One Wish, "Nobody's Supposed To Be Here", at the close of 1998. That song was helped by a club remix transformation of the original album ballad into a floorfilling thumper, so they tried the same tactic with the follow-up, "It's Over Now". The song, which was a slinky number on the album, was a moderate hit on the R&B chart at #20, and became her biggest dance hit, spending two weeks at #1 on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Play tally, mainstream pop radio was still overplaying "Nobody's Supposed..." which overshadowed that song mixed in the similar style, and it stalled down at #70 on the pop Hot 100 list, and #49 in the UK.
For the fourth offering from the record, Cox's label went for a song that wouldn't be mixed for the clubs, the soul breakup track "We Can't Be Friends". Written by producer Shep Crawford with Jimmy Russell, the record featured R.L. Huggar of the R&B vocal group Next, whose debut album spun off three top-40 pop hits including the biggest hit of 1998, "Too Close". R.L. himself also collaborated with singers Tyrese, Case, and Ginuwine on the single "The Best Man I Can Be" from the soundtrack to the movie The Best Man, which went to #15 on Billboard's R&B chart and #67 on the pop Hot 100. Cast as lovers in a breakup that both are sad about the situation, and instead of relaying what caused the split, it describes the aftermath, with lines like "I went by mother's saw your car there, to her you still family, and it don't seem fair". The lack of details on the pain that caused this just allows the pair to go through vocal gymnastics that aren't too overbearing. The video for this, which has Deborah and R.L. packing up the apartment, has a cloudy ending to what will happen next...
"We Can't Be Friends" became Cox's second top ten pop hits, and R.L.'s first apart from Next, in October of 1999. The song was also her second #1 on Billboard's R&B chart, spending two weeks at the summit, and went to #5 on the older-skewing Adult R&B radio format list.
A fifth single from One Wish, the downtempo "September", went to #37 on the Adult R&B chart. That was followed by "I Never Knew", which became the fourth Dance Club Play #1 from the album (which also included lead single "Things Just Ain't The Same") in 2000. Later that year, Cox collaborated with Whitney Houston for a new song on Whitney's greatest hits set, "Same Script, Different Cast". Released as a single, the older version of "The Boy Is Mine" went to #14 on the R&B chart, #70 on Billboard's Hot 100, #4 on the Dance Club Play list, and topped the Adult R&B radio chart.
After a four-year break where Deborah left Arista Records to join mentor Clive Davis at his own label J Records, returned in 2002 with her third disc The Morning After. It was her highest-ranked album on the Billboard 200 sales tally and her sole top-40 set at #38. Three tracks from the record were remixed to become #1 dance hits, with "Absolutely Not" (my personal favorite), "Mr. Lonely", and "Play Your Part". The title track went to #14 on the Adult R&B radio chart and #63 on the main R&B list. A collection of her club successes, Remixed, came out in 2003, and from it a cover of Phil Collins' "Something Happened On The Way To Heaven" topped Billboard's Dance Airplay radio chart for eleven weeks.
The next few years saw Cox concentrating on stage and screen work, since J Records had become primarily focused on being a machine for the American Idol franchise. She released a one-off single, "House Is Not A Home", on the indie label Nervous, that became her ninth #1 dance hit in 2005. Two years later, Deborah recorded a album for Decca Records dedicated to jazz great Dinah Washington, Destination Moon, which returned her to the Billboard 200 chart at #175, while going to #3 on the Jazz Albums list and nabbing a nomination for Best Engineered Album at the Grammy Awards.
Cox returned to R&B and dance music on her next project, The Promise, which she released independently on her own Deco label in 2008. Two of its tracks made the Adult R&B chart, with "Did You Ever Love Me" doing the best at #22, while also hitting #69 on the main R&B list in Billboard. But the biggest success from the record was "Beautiful U R", which went to #10 on the Canadian Hot 100 chart, peaked at #9 on the American Dance Airplay list and topped Billboard's Dance Club Play tally. The album went to #106 on the Billboard 200 sales list in America, and is her most recent studio album.
Since then, Deborah has released music piecemeal, and has scored three more #1 hits on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart; "If It Wasn't For Love" in 2011, "Higher" featuring Paige in 2013, and "Let The World Be Ours Tonight" which became her lucky thirteenth chart-topper in 2017. That same year, she appeared in the musical version of Whitney Houston movie The Bodyguard, and she released an eight-song EP of Houston's songs tied in to the stage show. Cox's most recent radio hit, "Easy Way", went to #13 on Billboard's Adult R&B chart in the spring of 2020. She won't return to the series, but R.L. will be back along with Next.
(6/10)
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Next up, a clip of Cox doing her part in concert in Philly in 2009...
and lastly, R.L. doing his share for his own show...
Up tomorrow: G-funk artist has no limits to his desires.
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