Robbed hit of the week 5/2/22 - Elton John's "Someday Out Of The Blue"...

 

 

"Someday Out Of The Blue (Theme From The Road To El Dorado)" - Elton John

from the album The Road To El Dorado (Original Soundtrack) (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #49

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from Elton John, who by the 1990s was coasting mostly on soundtrack (The Lion King), stage (Aida), and funeral work (Lady Diana). His collaboration with country-pop single LeAnn Rimes, "Written In The Stars" from Aida, landed in the pop Hot 100 top-40 in the spring of 1999. The following year, Elton was hired for yet another animated film soundtrack project, this time for DreamWorks' cute little whitewashing of the Spanish conquistadors, The Road To El Dorado.  Employing such classic Latin actors Kenneth Branaugh and Kevin Kline as stowaways in the marauding ships, it's a movie that definitely wouldn't see the light of day now, for its mockingly primitive treatment of the indigenous American population and their spirituality. The film didn't even make it's budget back at the box office, which I guess in turn hurt even Elton from getting his even-then-dated music out on pop radio. The lead single from the project, "Someday Out Of The Blue", tries, with Lion King partners Elton and Tim Rice along with Madonna producer Patrick Leonard writing the track, with is a by-the-numbers generic film love song done a million times for these cartoon movies. But Elton, Tim, and Patrick are pros, and while the result is by far not embarrassing, it doesn't grab like "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" or "Circle Of Life" did, though the bridge is quite nice. The music video did get to animate Elton yet again...

While "Someday Out Of The Blue" did quite well on "easy listening" radio, peaking at #5 on Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary radio chart and #36 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, the song stopped just above the halfway mark on the pop Hot 100 in May of 2000. Internationally, the single made the top-40 in Switzerland at #40. The Road To El Dorado soundtrack, released in March of that year, also fell short, stalling at #63 on the Billboard 200 sales tally. 

A second single promoted from the film, "Friends Never Say Goodbye", went to #21 on the Adult Contemporary radio chart, but missed the pop Hot 100, even though it sported back-up vocals by the ultra-popular Backstreet Boys (uncredited, though). 

 

(5/10)

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Here's Elton performing the song with just his piano on the Rosie O'Donnell talk show...

and lastly, with a live band in San Francisco for a VH1 special concert promoting the album...