Songoftheday 10/4/22 - She stole your heart only did it because she could, chewed you up and spat you out...
"This Is Me" - Dream
from the album It Was All A Dream (2001)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #39 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1
Today's song comes from the female "girl-group" vocal act Dream, who had rose all the way to the runner-up spot on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 at the close of 2000 with their debut single "He Loves U Not". Holly Blake-Arnstein, Diana Ortiz, Ashley Poole, and Melissa Schuman followed that hit with "This Is Me". Originally written by Steve Kipner, David Frank (of the System), and Pam Sheyne (the same team from their previous hit), the single also featured a remix featuring rapper Kain that sampled jazz-soul artist Bob James' "Take Me To The Mardi Gras" and sported an entirely different writers list of Sean "P Diddy" Combs, Mario Winans, Matthew Weinberg, Taurian Shropshire, and M Jones. In the original the girls (they're all teens still) are the "rebound girlfriend" and are addressing their boy who doesn't trust that they won't cheat like his ex. It's simple and straightforward though a little creepy on how stalkerish the guy seems to be. The original production from Frank is more electro-funk like the System, and is preferable to the remix...
"It Was Me" became Dream's second and final top-40 hit on the Hot 100 in June of 2001. The song also rose to #80 on Billboard's R&B Singles chart. On the radio, the track made it to #13 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart.
After touring with the likes of Destiny's Child and NSYNC, Schuman left the group to focus on acting, and was replaced by Kasey Sheridan. A prospective lead single for their second album, "Crazy" featuring rapper Loon (who will be on this series), was released in the summer of 2003, but after the track didn't do as well as Combs probably would have liked (#39 at Mainstream Top-40 and #40 on the dance-oriented Rhythmic format), the album was shelved, making a brief appearance on iTunes in 2008 but disappearing shortly after.
Since then, the various members have reunited sporadically, with all of them coming together in 2015 for a new single, "I Believe", and a tour with 98 Degrees. However they disbanded after that.
(5/10)
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For the "remix" of the track, which was a different song with mostly different lyrics, Combs himself joined the group and Kain in the completely new-shot music video..
and lastly, at a reunion concert in 2016 that combined both versions...
Up tomorrow: Rap veteran resurrects a soul giant for one more trip to the charts.
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