Songoftheday 6/2/22 -Some kids have and some kids don't, and some of us are wondering why...
"One Voice" - Billy Gilman
from the album One Voice (2000)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #38 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 2
Today's song comes from country music singer Billy Gilman, who was born and grew up in the southern state of Rhode Island (snark), where he already had been singing on stage as a child at local fairs. Ray Benson, leader of the traditional country act Asleep At The Wheel, took him under his wing and helped Billy record an audition tape which eventually got him signed to Epic Records. Gilman released his debut single "One Voice" in the spring of 2000, days after he turned twelve years old. The song, written and produced by Don Cook and David Malloy, was a morality lesson that starts in poor man generalities before taking a dark turn about a boy with a gun that is STILL sadly relevant in this exact point in time. Like LeAnn Rimes, Gilman's voice carries this, though he's a little more choirboy pristine that Rimes' sassiness even in her youth (as well as a command of phrasing). The tearjerker music video played on the third verse's plot, and while radio was moderately favorable to it, it sold like hotcakes, enough so that a mid-charting single like this made the crossover pop top-40...
"One Voice" made it to Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100's Top-40 in September of 2000. The song rose to #20 on their Country Airplay chart, and even popped onto the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format list for a week at #29. Internationally, the single peaked at #23 on the Canadian Country chart, and was a minor hit in the UK at #84. The One Voice album, released in June of that year, went to #22 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, almost spending a year on the chart, and #2 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, Gilman was nominated for Best Male Country Vocal Performance, losing to the great Johnny Cash for his remake of "Solitary Man". "One Voice" also was up for Best Country Song for Malloy and Cook, which went to Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance".
Despite the hefty sales of the debut album and single, somehow country radio was still reluctant with such a young boy singing, and follow-up single "Oklahoma", which tackled the topic of foster children and birth parents, only managed to slip onto the top 40 at #33, though the single sales were enough to get it to #63 on the pop Hot 100. (Personally, I feel it's a stronger song.)
Capitalizing on the sales potential, Epic had Gilman speedily record a holiday album for the close of that year. Classic Christmas just missed the top-40 on the Billboard 200 at #42, got as high as #4 on the Country Albums list. An original song from the set, "Warm & Fuzzy", which also was on the "Oklahoma" single, got enough seasonal airplay to hit #50 on the Country chart.
The following year, Gilman returned with his third studio set Dare To Dream. While the album again made the top ten on the Country Albums chart at #6, and nearly made the top-40 on the Billboard 200 at #45, country radio was even more cold, with lead single "She's My Girl", a corny attempt at being upbeat, getting to #50 and follow-up "Elisabeth" stalling at #56, his most recent Nashville radio hit.
In 2003, his album Music Through Heartsongs: Songs Based On The Poems Of Mattie J.T. Stepanek, was a labor of love, devoted to a prolific young poet who succumbed to muscular dystrophy. His voice was getting deeper, but the niche appeal of the pop-leaning set had Nashville ignoring it, and the set went to #109 on the Billboard 200 and #15 on the Country Albums list. At this point Epic and Gilman parted ways. Billy signed with Image Records for two more albums in the 2000's, with a self-titled set reaching #55 on the Country Albums chart in 2006.
Fast forward a decade and Billy had come out as gay and appeared on the music competition show The Voice, where he came in a quite respectable second place. With his covers available for sale on iTunes, he popped on the country sales chart with his version of Martina McBride's "Anyway" at #4, and his take on Queen's "The Show Must Go On" got to #41 on the Rock Songs chart in Billboard. From the finale, both Billy's remake of the classic "My Way" and what would have been his "winner's song", "Because Of Me", both "bubbled under" the Billboard Hot 100 at #5 and #6 respectively. A collection of the Voice songs made it to #77 on the Billboard 200. He's also released a series of singles since, with a reprise of "One Voice" with the vocal group Home Free coming out in 2021.
(6/10)
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Billy got introduced by Reba McEntire on the Family TV Awards in 2000...
Here's a clip of Billy singing at a wedding in 2016, at the Versace Mansion no less...
He did a gig in New York in 2019...
In 2021, he got together with Home Free, an acappella group that got fame on the best singing competition of all, The Sing Off, to rerecord "One Voice"...
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