Songoftheday 3/20/23 - Under a lover's sky gonna be with you and no one's gonna be around...

 

 

"Can't Fight The Moonlight" - LeAnn Rimes

from the album Coyote Ugly (Original Soundtrack) (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #11 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

 

Today's song comes from LeAnn Rimes, who almost reached the top ten on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with her big ballad "I Need You" from the miniseries Jesus in the summer of 2000. Rimes' next single would be pulled from another soundtrack, this time the film about barmaids with big dreams Coyote Ugly. LeAnn recorded vocals for songs sung by the movie's star, Piper Perabo, and two of them, both written by song doctor supreme Diane Warren, were released on a single together. The "A-Side",  "Can't Fight The Moonlight", was a midtempo pop number that's got corny lyrics about romance in the evening, like "There's no escaping love once the gentle breeze weaves its spell upon your heart" that flows on the melody but doesn't want you to think about it. The production was miles away from the neo-traditional country music Rimes started her career with, and more like a Celine Dion album cut with oddly off guitar sounds and that boyband beat imported from Sweden. Nevertheless LeAnn did her best to sell it, and her voice cuts through the din. Original released in August of 2000, the single stopped short at #71 on the pop Hot 100, while getting some unsoliticed country radio airplay (probably from the name recognition), enough to make the Country Songs chart at #61. The music video had LeAnn on the set of the movie, with cutaways from scenes from the film...

 

 The "B-side" of the single, the ballad "But I Do Love You", then was worked to Nashville, and became a moderate country radio hit at the beginning of 2001, reaching #18. However, what happened was that stations started to play the dance-pop remix done by British producer Graham Stack that was on the international single. This version eschewed all the electric guitar noise in favor of a Cher-like beat and touches of acoustic guitar like the Latin explosion hits, and the "boyband" beat that had already grown stale was gone as well. Fans responded favorably to the new mix, and Curb Records released "Can't Fight The Moonlight" as its own maxi-CD single with the Stack mixes, and it finally made the top-40 almost reaching the top ten...

 

"Can't Fight The Moonlight" became LeAnn's seventh, and so far latest, top-40 hit on the Hot 100 in March of 2002. On the radio, the song climbed to #8 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, #25 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format, and  #15 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") list, and #61 on the Country Airplay chart. The dance remixes of the song from Thunderpuss 2000 helped the track go to #17 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. Internationally, the single went to #1 in the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium (#1 Flanders/#3 Wallonia), Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Romania, and Hungary, while reaching the top ten in Italy (#2), Switzerland (#2), Norway (#2), Poland (#2), France (#3), Denmark (#3), Greece (#5), Canada (#6), Germany (#8), and Austria (#8). The Coyote Ugly soundtrack, released in August of 2000, peaked at #9 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over four million copies. 

In the autumn of 2001, Curb released a toss-off album God Bless America (to capitalize from the post 9/11 patriotic fervor, most likely), which got to #159 on the Billboard 200 and had a minor country radio hit with the title track (#51). Also, Adult Contemporary radio was serviced with a track from LeAnn's I Need You album, "Soon", which climbed to #14 on that genre chart. (That album also contained "Can't Fight The Moonlight" from its first incarnation.) 

 

LeAnn's next proper album, completed after her emancipation from her father/producer Wilbur Rimes, was Twisted Angel, which arrived in the fall of 2002. The album went to #12 in the Billboard 200, and #3 on their Country Albums list, but that was residual fans, as the single "Life Goes On" couldn't find a good home on the radio, as is was too "pop" for country stations (one week at #60), while it stopped at #35 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay list, and "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #110. (It did better on the older-skewing stations, hitting #9 at Adult Contemporary and #28 at Adult Top-40.) However her international stature didn't waiver, and the song just missed the singles top-40 in the UK at #11. She also made the British top-40 with a song from the sequel film Legally Blonde 2, "We Can", which hit #16 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart and #27 in the UK.

 

It almost looked as if Curb was closing LeAnn's career, with another compilation titled Greatest Hits with a new song, "This Love", which barely scraped the country radio top-40 at #37 at the start of 2004. They also pushed out another holiday record, What a Christmas World, which had a rendition of "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" that spent a week at #3 on the Adult Contemporary radio chart (which was a boon for Christmas music).

But thankfully, Rimes made the wise choice to go back to the music she made in the beginning, with a straight-ahead country set titled This Woman. Released in 2005, the album spun off three top ten Country Songs hits, with all of them peaked in the 50's on Billboard's Hot 100. The third single, "Something's Gotta Give", almost made it to the top, with a week at #2, and almost made the top half of the Hot 100 at #51. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, losing to Carrie Underwood for "Jesus, Take The Wheel". Another song from the set, "Probably Wouldn't Be This Way", also hit #8 on the Adult Contemporary ("easy listening") chart. The This Woman album spent a week at #3 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and got to #2 on the Country Albums list, selling over a half-million copies (her most recent "gold" record).

 

Of course, this veer didn't fit the international market, and instead Curb released a pop album, Whatever We Wanna, only in Europe. The record went to #15 in the UK, and the lead single from it, "And It Feels Like", went to #22 on the British Singles chart, her most recent top-40 hit there. 

Rimes continued in the country vein with 2007 album Family, which racked up another top ten on the Billboard 200 at #4, and also getting to #2 on the Country Albums list. however the lead single, "Nothin' Better To Do", stopped short of the Country Songs top ten at #14 (it deserved much better). The song was nominated for the Female Country Vocal Grammy Award, which also went to Underwood for "Before He Cheats". Another cut from the record, "What I Cannot Change", missed the country chart, but also got the Female Country Vocal Grammy nomination, which again went to Carrie Underwood for "Last Name". Also Nashville was cool to the song, dance remixes helped it top Billboard's Dance Club Play for a week in 2008. 

For her twelfth album, LeAnn released an album over remakes, Lady & Gentlemen, which got to #32 on the Billboard 200 in 2011. The biggest success from the set, a cover of John Anderson's "Swingin'", scraped the Country Songs top-40 at #40 (her last at that level so far), and was also up for the Female Country Vocal Grammy, which Miranda Lambert took home for "The House That Made Me". Her next record, 2013's Spitfire, also made the top-40 on the Billboard 200 at #36, but at the time she was more famous for her tabloid going's on and affair and subsequent marriage to actor Eddie Cibrian. Country radio ignored it, and it would be her last on Curb Records. 

Since then Rimes has bounced around different indie labels, first releasing two holiday albums on two different imprints. The title track of 2015's Today Is Christmas album on Prodigy was her most recent Country Singles placing at #60, while on that same record a cover of Kenny Loggin's "Celebrate Me Home" with Gavin DeGraw got her back on the Adult Contemporary list for one more time at #12.

LeAnn dipped her feet (and knew her remaining audience) in 2017 with her Remnants album, her latest Billboard 200 hit at #88. While again country radio gave it a pass, three songs from it were remixed to become big club hits, with both "Long Live Love" and "Love Is Love Is Love", spending a week at #1 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. The following year, Rimes put out a 5-song EP on Everle Records titled Re-Imagined featured re-recordings of her older hits. One of them, "How Do I Live", was again remixed for club consumption and rose to #7 on the Dance Club Play chart. 

Since then, LeAnn has released a couple more albums on EverLe, most recently the inspirational set God's Work in 2022, which has gotten her back on the radio in the UK with "Spaceship" doing quite well over there.''

Original Version: 5/10               Graham Stack Remix: 6/10

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

 

The "B-Side" of the single, the Diane Warren-written "But I Do Love You", was a moderate country radio hit at #18. For me, it's a 6/10...

 

 

Here's LeAnn performing on the Jimmy Kimmel show...

She also sang "Can't Fight The Moonlight" at the ACM Awards in 2001...

 

 The singer also brought out the song on her stint on CMT's Crossroads...

Lastly, a stripped down version for CMT as well..

Up tomorrow: This grunge band can't see straight.