Songoftheday 4/3/22 - Monday night and I feel so low, I count the hours but they go so slow...

"Be With You" - Enrique Iglesias

from the album Enrique (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 18

Today's song comes from Enrique Iglesias, whose English-language breakthrough album Enrique had already scored two pop hits with "Rhythm Divine" and the #1 "Bailamos". The third single from the record was yet another dance-pop nugget from the men who gave us Cher's "Believe", Paul Barry and Mark Taylor, who co-wrote "Be With You" with Enrique, with Taylor co-producing with Brian Rawling. As such, it's got a layer of sheen common in that genre at the turn of the millennium, with only the flourishes of acoustic guitar lending any bit of "Spanish" flavor to the track. It has the woeful Enrique pining for a woman whose relationship with him had ended (hence the "now that you're gone") and has him going between brooding and wailing in falsetto over his loneliness. Get your friends together, Enrique! It's of course pleasant background dance music, offensive to no one, that allows us to just gawk and Iglesias for all his sexual wonder, since the music video has nothing to do with the somber lyrics of the song, but rather a bunch of hot people coming together in the desert for a party...

The bop did its trick, and "Be With You" became Enrique's second #1 pop hit in America in June of 2000. The single also rose to #27 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, and #28 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. The dance remixes of the track, done by the likes of the Thunderpuss team and Mijangos, helped it take a week at #1 on the Dance Club Play tally as well. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Canada (#2), Belgium (#3F/#9W), Hungary (#3), Spain (#4), and Portugal (#6), while making the top-40 in Italy (#11), New Zealand (#12), Sweden (#13), Finland (#19), Germany (#20), Switzerland (#21), Austria (#26), Iceland (#30), and Australia (#36). At the Grammy Awards in 2001, "Be With You" was nominated for Best Dance Recording, his most recent nod, losing out to the execrable "Who Let The Dogs Out" by the Baha Men (seriously who voted for that?).

The final single from Enrique was a duet with Whitney Houston, "Could I Have This Kiss Forever", which also appeared on her Greatest Hits collection. Despite having the Taylor/Rawling production, and being written by song doctor supreme Diane Warren, the ballad stalled right below the halfway mark on the Hot 100 at #52, though it did climb to #10 on the Adult Contemporary radio chart, and was a top ten hit across Europe, and deserved better in the States. Enrique will return to the series.

(6/10)

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Here's the edit of the Thunderpuss remix of "Be With You", which topped the dance chart for a week and nabbed the Grammy nomination...