Songoftheday 1/3/23 - Turn it inside out so I can see, the part of you that's drifting over me
"Everywhere" - Michelle Branch
from the album The Spirit Room (2001)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #12 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13
Today's song comes from singer/songwriter Michelle Branch, who grew up in Arizona before setting out on a music career. After getting noticed the old pre-social network days by posting songs on the Rolling Stones website, she opened for the brotherly pop trio Hanson on their 2000 tour, while releasing her first album, Broken Bracelet, independently that same year. With exposure from that album and the tour, Branch was signed to Madonna's sub-label Maverick Records, where she recorded her sophomore effort (and debut major-label release) The Spirit Room. The lead single for the album was "Everywhere", written by Branch with the album's producer, John Shanks, who had worked with Melissa Etheridge as well as Stevie Nicks for her 2001 album Trouble In Shangri-La. "Everywhere" was originally written when Branch was a teenager, and the finished product was released when she still was a teen, and it definitely sounds like a teen whose a fan of rock bands like Matchbox Twenty and Vertical Horizon would come up with. The lyrics from the get go allude to the object of her affections being just when she sleeps, and the rest of the song has her conpounding on that obsession. This is laid over a wall of sound provided by Shanks, and the tone hit the right spot with young women everywhere, and Michelle found herself with her first hit. The music video actually ditches the dreaming and has her kind of stalky...
"Everywhere" became Branch's first top-40 hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in November of 2001. On the radio, the song went to #5 on the Mainstream Top-40 Airplay chart, and #9 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Belgium (#2 Flanders) and New Zealand (#2), while reaching the top-40 in the United Kingdom (#18), Australia (#19), Italy (#28), and the Netherlands (#28). The Spirit Room album, released in July of that year, peaked at #28 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, spending a hefty 86 weeks on the list, and selling over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, Branch was nominated for Best New Artist, losing to jazz-pop wunderkind Norah Jones. Both Michelle and the album will be back to the series.
(6/10)
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Next up, appearing at the "Party In The Park" in London in 2002...
In 2022, Branch re-recorded her Spirit Room songs for a new album, including "Everywhere"...
She promoted the rework on YouTube with this acoustic take...
Finally, in concert in 2022 as well...
Up tomorrow: Rock band is calling you out.
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