Songoftheday 7/18/22 - I been searching for you, I heard a cry within my soul...

 

 

"Again" - Lenny Kravitz

from the album Greatest Hits (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (six weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 28

 

Today's song comes from rock artist Lenny Kravitz, who had returned to the pop top-40 in the spring of 1999 with "Fly Away".  Later that year, Kravitz contributed a cover of the 70's classic rock hit "American Woman" to the soundtrack to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me that climbed to the mid-point of Billboard magazine's Hot 100 pop chart in October of 1999. 

After releasing five successful studio albums, Kravitz released his Greatest Hits album in the fall of 2000. The collection included thirteen singles from his albums along with "American Woman" and a brand new song, "Again". Written and produced by Lenny, the song was promoted to radio as a "single" (since after the Billboard magazine's chart rule change album cuts can make the list). In it Kravitz pines for a lost lover, wishing for a reunion that will probably never come wistfully. It's more in tune to his earlier hit "It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over" than the chonky-guitar driven singles of late, and pop and adult radio grabbed on to this hard. The music video, featuring actress Gina Gershon, puts Lenny in the middle of a love triangle where he comes off as the worst...

"Again" became Kravitz's second top ten pop hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in February of 2001. The song spent eleven weeks at #2 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 radio chart, and topped the Pop Airplay list for three weeks. At rock radio, the track spent a half year on the Alternative Rock chart with a high of #23, while peaking at #3 on the Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple-A") Rock format. Internationally, the single topped the charts in Italy and Iceland, and made the top ten in Portugal (#2), Belgium (#3W/#39F), New Zealand (#5), Croatia (#5), Austria (#6), Switzerland (#9), and Spain (#10). The Greatest Hits album, released in October of 2000, spent one week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, his highest career rank, going on to sell over three million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, "Again" won for Best Male Rock Performance with Vocal, and was nominated for Best Rock Song, losing to Creed's "With Arms Wide Open". Lenny will return to the series.

(7/10)

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Here's Lenny appearing on Letterman to perform the song in 2000...

Next up, on the Howard Stern Show on SiriusFM the following year...

Moving up to 2011 for a private concert in Los Angeles...

and lastly, in concert in Argentina in 2019...

Up tomorrow: These southern women are lacking.