Songoftheday 1/25/23 -I was reborn when I was broken I wouldn't believe, been through a storm with no use in hopin'...

 

 

"Lifetime" - Maxwell

from the album Now (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 6

 

Today's song comes from neo-soul singer Maxwell (aka Gerald Maxwell Rivera), who had scored the biggest hit of his career in the spring of 1999 in the pop top five with the R. Kelly written-and-produced "Fortunate" from the movie Life. Later that year, a contribution to another soundtrack, The Best Man, yielded another minor hit with "Let's Not Play The Game", which stopped at #55 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart. In 2000, a live acoustic remake of Kate Bush's classic "This Woman's Work", from his 1997 MTV Unplugged album, started to garner urban radio airplay, enough so to climb to #61 on the R&B Singles chart. 

At the beginning of the next year, Maxwell released the preview single for his upcoming third album, Now. "Get To Know Ya", written and produced by the artist and Hod David, was a loose midtempo funk jam, and was a modest R&B hit at #25, and got as high as #2 on the Adult R&B format, but only "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at the #101 spot. Nevertheless, the song brought enough attention to the singer that his album debuted at #1 on the sales chart that September. 

The following month, Maxwell released the follow-up, "Lifetime". Again written and produced with David, the record is a lush poem that finds him at the crossroads of a relationship, where he must choose either the easy way out or the harder but more rewarding path forward. The production quickly segues from a church organ at the start quickly to some spacey keyboards. The song isn't presented for dancing, or booty calls, but reflecting, and those synths help it along greatly...

"Lifetime" became Maxwell's third top-40 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in November of 2001, while climbing to #5 on their R&B Singles chart. On the radio, the single got to #1 on the R&B/Hip Hop Airplay chart, while spending fifteen weeks at #5 on the older-skewing Adult R&B format. The Now album, released in late August of that year, spent a week at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, as well as on the R&B Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2002, "Lifetime" was nominated for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, losing to Usher for his #1 hit "U Remind Me". 

Maxwell recorded a studio version of "This Woman's Work", and that was released as the third single. This time the song rose to #16 on the R&B Singles chart, and placed at #58 on the Hot 100.  Maxwell will return in time to the series.

(7/10)

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Here's Maxwell performing the song on The Tonight Show...

and lastly, on tour in 2022...

Up tomorrow: Country singer hits it big by milking 9/11.