Songoftheday 3/10/22 - It's so incredible the way things work themselves out, and unemotional once you know what it's all about...

 

 

"Back At One" - Mark Wills

from the album Permanently (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from country music singer Mark Wills, who had scored his first top-40 crossover hit in the spring of 1999 with "Wish You Were Here".  For his third album Permamently, Mark went for the same tactic he did with his second; releasing a cover of a recent pop hit as the lead single. It that case, his version of 98 Degrees' "I Do (Cherish You)" landed him at #2 on the country chart and landed his first appearance on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 at #72. This time, he went for an even bigger hit to cover, Brian McKnight's adult-pop ballad "Back At One", which spent two months at #2 on the pop chart in November and December of 1999. Coming so close behind that success guaranteed a level of familiarity in the song, and Carson Chamberlain's production gives it a different vibe from Brian's original. Country radio approved, and the single got enough airplay to place itself not only at the top regions of the genre airplay list but back into the pop top-40 as well...

 

 Wills' version of "Back At One" became his second top-40 pop crossover hit in February of 2000. The song took a week at #2 on Billboard's Country Songs chart, spending a half year (26 weeks) on the list. Internationally, the single topped the Canadian Country chart. The Permanently album, released in January of that year, was by far Mark's highest-charting album, reaching #23 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and #3 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over a half million copies. 

Mark's follow-up was yet another remake of a recent R&B/pop hit, "Almost Doesn't Count", which was a top-20 pop hit for Brandy in the summer of 1999. His delicate reading of the song, which I think was even stronger than the previous one and among his best, climbed to #19 on Billboard's Country Songs chart, while "bubbling under" the pop Hot 100 at #107. That was followed by the upbeat original "I Want To Know (Everything There Is To Know About You)", which got to #33 on the Country chart. Mark will be back to the series.

(6/10)

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Here's Wills' in concert...

Up tomorrow: An amazing country band gets happy.