Songoftheday 2/13/22 - I can read your mind and I know your story, I see what you're going through...

 

 

"That's The Way It Is" - Celine Dion

from the album All The Way...A Decade Of Song (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #6 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 22

 

Today's song is from Celine Dion, who had landed a #1 hit single at the close of 1998 with her unfortunate duet with future felon R. Kelly "I'm Your Angel", which appeared on her holiday album These Are Special Times. After taking a break to rest and regroup, Dion returned a year later with a half-greatest hits half new material set All The Way...A Decade Of Song. Along with nine of her most-loved hits, including #1 singles "The Power Of Love", "Because You Loved Me", "My Heart Will Go On", and the aforementioned "I'm Your Angel", there were seven new recordings on the record. One of them, the mid-tempo empowerment song "That's The Way It Is", was released as the first single. Written by producers Max Martin and Kristian Lundin along with Andreas Carlsson, the Swedish team behind Ace of Base and many of the boy-band/diva hits of the day, the song was a self-assured but lyrically vague pep talk to someone feeling discouraged, but of course Celine puts her all into it, making the record better than it would be in another's hands....

"That's The Way It Is" returned Celine to the pop top ten in America for the tenth and so far last time in March of 2000. The song spent a week at #1 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, while getting to #5 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format list. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Sweden (#2), Italy (#3), Norway (#3), Hungary (#3), Poland (#4), Finland (#4), Greece (#4), Canada (#5), Switzerland (#5), France (#6), the Netherlands (#7), Belgium (#7W/#17F), New Zealand (7), Germany (#8), Spain (#8), and Austria (#8). It also peaked at #12 in the UK, Ireland, and Iceland, and #14 in Australia. The All The Way collection, released in November of 1999, spent three weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over nine million copies in America. 

 

The second song from All The Way to be promoted to radio in America was "I Want You To Need Me", written by song doctor supreme Diane Warren and produced by Matt Serletic (of Matchbox 20 fame).  While it was a moderate success on Adult Contemporary radio at #12, the ballad was passed over by mainstream pop stations, and it didn't make the Hot 100. Also from the album, the track "Live (For The One I Love)", a translated cover of the song "Vivre" from the French music La Notre-Dame De Paris, was a top-40 hit in Canada at #23. Her remake of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", made famous by Roberta Flack, was a hit in the UK at #19. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, her posthumous "duet" with Frank Sinatra (who passed in 1998), "All The Way", earned her a nomination for Best Pop Vocal Collaboration, losing out to B.B. King and Dr. John for "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby". Celine will be back to the series.

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Here's Celine singing "That's The Way It Is" with the it-act of the day, NSYNC, for her TV special...

 

 Dion performed the hit at the Billboard Music Awards in 1999..

Celine returned to the stage in 2002 for the Live World Children's Day charity broadcast...

and lastly live in Vegas in 2019...

Up tomorrrow: R&B singer is down for love this evening.