Songoftheday 1/7/22 - The sun is shinin' everyday the clouds never get in the way for you and me, I've known you just a week or two but baby, I'm so into you...

 

 

"I Love You" - Martina McBride

from the albums Runaway Bride (Original Soundtrack) and Emotion (both 1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #24 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from country music singer Martina McBride, whose fourth album Evolution broke her through big in Nashville as well as the mainstream market, placing six singles in Billboard magazine's Country Singles top ten, with two of them, "Wrong Again" and "Whatever You Say", reaching the top-40 on the pop crossover Hot 100 in 1999. The following year, McBride contributed a song to the soundtrack of the Julia Roberts/Richard Gere romantic comedy Runaway Bride which would also eventually be the lead single for her next album Emotion. "I Love You", written by husband and wife Keith and Adrienne Follesé along with Tammy Hyler, and produced by Martina with Paul Worley, was a bit more twee in the lyrics compared to her previous bigger hits. But what it lacks in emotional complexity, McBride makes up for it in cheery vocal force, as she offers Hallmark card worthy platitudes in the exact same vein as Faith Hill's "This Kiss". Which of course made it perfect for a movie song, and with the big success of Runaway Bride it gave Martina exposure to a much wider audience, and in return she scored her biggest country radio hit. But for me, it's such a blatant rewrite of "This Kiss" that it miraculously sours my favorite country singer of the era...

"I Love You" became Martina's third top-40 crossover hit, and highest ranking, on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in November of 1999. The song reigned for five weeks on their Country Singles chart, and went to #21 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio list. Internationally, the single reached the top-40 in Italy (#21) and Australia (#38), and topped the Canadian Country chart. The Runaway Bride soundtrack, released in July of 1999, went to #4 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a million copies (and also spin off two more entries in this series). Meanwhile, her Emotion album, released in September of that year, went to #19 on the Billboard 200, #3 on the Country Albums list, also sold over a million. At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "I Love You" was nominated for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, losing out to Shania Twain for her "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!".

The second single from Martina's album was the infinitely better "Love's The Only House", which went to #3 on Billboard's Country Singles chart, and just missed the crossover Hot 100 top-40 at #42. That was followed by the ballad "There You Are", which also hit the country top-10 at #10, while stopping at #60 on the Hot 100, though this one got some decent "easy listening" radio airplay, causing it to rise to #15 on the Adult Contemporary format chart. Lastly, the fourth offering from Emotion, "It's My Time", got McBride to show off her vocal acrobatics, but just missed the Country Singles top ten at #11, while also just missing the Hot 100, "bubbling under" at #102. Martina will be back to the series, as will the Runaway Bride soundtrack very soon. 

(4/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Martina performing "I Love You" live on the Tonight Show in 1999...

Next up, in concert at Farm Aid in 2001...

and lastly, an acoustic take for the CMT cable channel in 1999...

Up tomorrow: "Cheap" Christian pop band watches her walk by. Again.