Songoftheday 2/20/23 - So lately been wondering who will be there to take my place...

 

 

"Wherever You Will Go" - The Calling

from the album Camino Palmero (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 40

 

Today's song comes from the band the Calling, who came together in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s with friend Alex Band and Aaron Kamin. Going through a series of names and lineups, they had the luck to be living next to producer and label head Ron Fair, who helped them get signed to RCA Records. Band and Kamin settled on "the Calling" as a moniker and assembling a new group behind them, they released their debut album Camino Palmero in 2001. The lead single from the record was the mid-tempo ballad "Wherever You Will Go". Written by Band and Kamin, and produced by Marc Tanner, the song has the appearance of speaking to a person whose loved one had left, though its vague enough to apply to either death or the end of a relationship as well as for lovers, spouses, family members, friends, and whatever. A general Hallmark condolence card, if you will. The production and vocals are like that soaring inspirational fare that Creed rode to the top of the charts, and Band puts across a fine-enough performance. The music video most associated to the song out of the two shot turns the intention of the song on its head, having them perform in front of a young woman who found out she's being cheated on. It shows that the swelling emotion put forth in the song is so general that it could be worked for any situation, and with RCA's push (Fair even played on the track), the song flooded radio, and became the Calling's first and only hit on the Hot 100...

"Wherever You Will Go" reached the top five on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 in March of 2002. On the radio, the song peaked at #4 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, #21 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") list, and hit both the Mainstream (#37) and Alternative (#14) Rock airplay charts. But its biggest success was at the older-skewing "Adult Top-40" format, where it spent a whopping 23 weeks at #1, a feat only surpassed by Santana's "Smooth". Internationally, the single hit #1 in Italy, New Zealand, and Poland, and made the top ten in the United Kingdom (#3), Norway (#4), Australia (#5), France (#7), Denmark (#7), Switzerland (#7), Austria (#8), Ireland (#8), and Romania (#10). The Camino Palmero album, released in July of 2001, went to #36 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over a half-million copies.

Despite the huge success of the song, the Calling's follow-up single, "Adrienne", failed to make the Hot 100, only "bubbling under" at #116, even though it was a moderate hit on Mainstream Top-40 (#34) and Adult Top-40 (#22) radio stations. The song did manage to hit the top-40 overseas in Belgium (#11 Wallonia/#14 Flanders), the UK (#18), Italy (#21), and Ireland (#32). A third single, "Could It Be Any Harder", popped on to the Adult Top-40 list at #35. 

After that first albums the other three members besides Band and Kamin - guitarist Sean Woolstenhulme, drummer Nate Wood, and bassist Billy Mohler, acrimoniously left the group. Alex and Aaron carried on with studio musicians and returned in 2004 with the appropriately-titled Two. The first single from the record, "Our Lives", attempted to recreate the vague drama of their big hit. However the public and radio didn't bite as hard, again "bubbling under" the Hot 100 in America at #125, and reaching #16 on the Adult Top-40 format. Internationally, it did manage to make the top-40 in Italy (#11), the UK (#13), Denmark (#17), and Ireland (#38). A second single, "Anything", got to #23 on the Adult Top-40 list. Although another track from the set, "Things Will Go My Way", landed a top-40 hit in the UK, the title wasn't prophetic - the album topped out at #54 on the Billboard 200, spending just three weeks on the list, and they decided to call it quits. Band put together a new Calling without Kamin in 2013 and again in 2016 to little notice. The Calling will not be calling back to the series, but thanks to Santana, Band will.

(6/10)

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The original version of the music video was an all-performance clip shot in Tijuana...

 

 Here is an acoustic version by Band and Kamin on Australian television in 2002...

and lastly, in concert in 2004.

Up tomorrow: R&B prodigy femininely assesses.