Songoftheday 9/19/23 -So please tell me why don't you come around no more? 'Cause right now I'm crying outside the door of your candy store...

 "The Game Of Love" - Santana featuring Michelle Branch

from the album Shaman (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #5 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 33

 

Today's song comes from the classic rock band Santana, led by guitar master Carlos Santana, whose "comeback" album Supernatural in 1999 had scored a pair of massive #1 pop hits with "Smooth" with Matchbox Twenty's Rob Thomas as well as "Maria Maria" with the duo Product G&B, with both spending double-digit stays at the summit of Billboard magazine's Hot 100.  They also took home eight Grammy Awards out of nine nominations, only because they were running against themselves in the Pop Vocal Collaboration category. With all this success, the world (and the music business) waited to see if Santana could continue that critical and commercial momentum.

In the autumn of 2002, the group returned with the first single from their nineteenth (!) studio album Shaman. "The Game Of Love" was written and produced by Gregg Alexander (most known for his own group the New Radicals) and Rick Nowels (who worked with Belinda Carlisle, Celine Dion, and Stevie Nicks), and originally had Alexander singing over Santana's band. However, Santana was on Arista Records, which was partially controlled by Clive Davis, who micromanages everything, and decided to feature a female instead. Tina Turner was brought in to record a version, but after she wouldn't promote the song in a video, Davis tossed it (for then) and placed young singer/songwriter Michelle Branch into the slot. Branch was herself going through a successful time with her major-label debut, with her own single "Goodbye To You" already climbing the charts when "The Game Of Love" was released. But she (and her management/label) had no qualms with this, and for good reason, as the song became the highest-charting single of her career. The song itself is immediately identifiable as from the New Radicals frontman, with its esoteric chord changes and witty lyrics about the ups and downs of romance, with each verse going from a high to an ebbed low over a modified shuffle that almost reminds me of a GMO'd bossa nova. Carlos' guitar weaves in and out of the sunny production with ease, and the horns bring so much to the record. It's tight, and yes it's product, but it's good product, and while it didn't claim the heights that "Smooth" or "Maria Maria" did, for a band around since the 1960s it did quite respectably. The music video had Santana and Michelle perform around a city that turns itself into a kissing orgy...

"The Game Of Love" became Santana's fifth single (and Branch's second) to reach the top ten on Billboard's Hot 100 in November of 2002. On the radio, the song peaked at #5 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart, and #16 on the Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple-A") rock radio list. But its biggest success were on the older-skewing formats, spending thirteen weeks at #1 on the Adult Top-40 chart and four weeks at the top of the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio panel. Internationally, the single made the top ten in Canada (#4 Sales), Portugal (#4), Spain (#6), New Zealand (#7), Romania (#7), the Czech Republic (#7), Hungary (#8), Croatia (#9), and Greece (#10). It also climbed into the top-40 in Italy (#11), the United Kingdom (#16), Norway (#17), Ireland (#19), Switzerland (#20), Australia (#21), and the Netherlands (#40). The Shaman album, released in October of that year, spent a week at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, their fourth and so far latest to reach the top and spending a year on the list, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, "The Game Of Love" won Santana and Branch the trophy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. 

Both Santana, Branch, and the Shaman album will be back to the series.

(9/10)

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Here's the original demo from Gregg Alexander of the New Radicals, and you can definitely see his style on this rough take...

The version with Tina Turner, fully completed, would eventually find itself on the Ultimate Santana hits compilation in 2007...

Santana and Michelle appeared on Letterman to perform the song...

And lastly, in a televised concert....

Up tomorrow: Neo-soul artist seeks stability.