Robbed hit of the week 8/15/22 - Jo Dee Messina's "Burn"...

 

 

"Burn" - Jo Dee Messina

from the album Burn (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #42

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from country music singer Jo Dee Messina, who scored her third crossover hit on Billboard magazine's "pop" Hot 100 in the summer of 2000 with the lead single from her album Burn, "That's The Way".  Jo Dee released the title track as the follow-up. "Burn" was originally released by its co-writer, Australian pop singer Tina Arena, who had a top-40 hit in the spring of 1996 with "Chains". Written by Arena with Pam Reswick and Steve Terfel, is a love song to the ordinary man, who she says can be whatever he wants and she'll love him as long as he's passionate about it. It's incredibly well paced between the smoldering verses offering up possibilities to the chorus where she breaks out the emotion. Arena's version went to #2 in her native country and almost made the British top-40 at #47, but was sadly ignored (as she pretty much was criminally) in the States...

 

Messina's version, produced by Tim McGraw and Byron Gallimore, makes good use of her bigger vocal power to punch the chorus to even greater heights. Her nuance on the verses, which admittedly include some funny choices like "you could be a dreamer who sleeps" or "go to heaven to touch God's face" (like, be dead is an option?) but f it I excuse it for a song that still strikes my heart. As for the music video, its mostly well-shot with nice scenery acting out the verses, but my god whoever decided on that fire special effect needs to be strung up...

While Jo Dee's "Burn" spent a half year on the country radio chart, with a week at #2, the song stopped a couple notches short of the Hot 100 top-40 in February of 2001. However, it was her first song to get significant airplay outside of country radio, going to #17 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening" radio format chart. Internationally, "Burn" just popped on to the Canadian Country chart at #49 before RPM magazine closed shop at the end of 2000. 

(9/10)

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and here's Jo Dee performing the song live on an awards show (sorry not the greatest sound)...