Songoftheday 2/17/22 - Got introduced to you by a friend, you were cute and all that baby you set the trend...

 

 

"Don't Say You Love Me" - M2M

from the albums Pokemon: The First Movie (Original Soundtrack) (1999) and Shades Of Purple (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #21 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

 

Today's song comes from the Norwegian pop duo M2M. Marit Larsen and Marion Raven met as kids in the 1990s and released a children's music album under their first names in 1996. Signing with Atlantic Records in America and rebranding as M2M, the pair's first released pop song was a track from the animated film Pokemon: The First Movie. "Don't Say You Love Me", written by Marit and Marion with producers Peter Zizzo and Jimmy Bralower, was a midtempo track about waiting for love until they know each other better, done with the production style of the Swedish hit factory that gave us NSYNC and Britney Spears (who both happen to appear on the soundtrack as well). Their voices are totally grating to me at times, but it's their youthful energy that won them over with the Disney Channel crowd, and they ended up with their first and biggest international hit...

 

 "Don't Say You Love Me" reached the American pop Top-40 in January of 2000. Internationally, the single made the top ten in their native Norway (#2), Australia (#4), New Zealand (#4), Denmark (#9), and Finland (#10), and also went top-40 in Ireland (#12), the UK (#16), the Netherlands (#16), Sweden (#17), Italy (#27), Belgium (#31F/#37W), and Canada (#36). The Pokemon soundtrack, released in November of 1999, went all the way to #8 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over two million copies. "Don't Say You Love Me" also served as the lead single to M2M's first American album Shades Of Purple, released in March of 2000, which rose to #89 on the Billboard 200. 

 

The duo's follow-up single, "Mirror Mirror", went to #62 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100, though it sold decently, going gold (over 500,000 sold), and reaching the top-40 in Canada at #13 and Australia at #30. (Shame, since it's a better record.) A third effort, "Everything You Do", missed the radio chart but reached #21 on Billboard's Dance Singles list. 

Marit and Marion returned in 2001 with their second and final album together The Big Room. While the lead single "Everything" returned them to the top ten in Norway at #6, and top-40 in Italy and Australia, the record was ignored in the States. Again, it's sad since their voices had matured and mellowed and the material was pretty strong for a pop effort. After an cut-short opening stint on Jewel's tour, the pair split to pursue solo careers.

Marion released her first solo album Here I Am in 2005, with the single "Break You" reaching #9 on the Norwegian singles chart. A year later, Raven provided the woman's voice on Meat Loaf's version of "It's All Coming Back To Me Now", which topped the chart in her homeland and went to #6 in the UK and #7 in Germany. That same year, Marit put out her first solo album Under The Surface, with lead track "Don't Save Me" going all the way to #1 in Norway. In 2008, her single "If A Song Could Get Me You" became a huge European hit, topping the charts in Norway, Germany, and Austria, and making #2 in Switzerland, and even made my personal chart for five weeks in 2009. Two year later, her song "Vår beste dag" ("Our Best Day") became Larsen's third #1 in her native country. 

(5/10)

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There was an original cut of the music video that featured scenes from The Pokemon movie...

Next up, M2M doing a concert for the Disney Channel...

and lastly, just the pair with only a guitar...

Up tomorrow: a saxy man brought in the current millennium.