Robbed hit of the week 03-04-24: Phil Collins' "Can't Stop Loving You"...

 

 

"Can't Stop Loving You" - Phil Collins

from the album Testify (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #76 (three weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from one of the biggest music stars of the 1980s and 1990s, Phil Collins, who we last saw in the Songoftheday series with his song from the 1999 Tarzan movie from Disney, "You'll Be In My Heart", which topped Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary radio chart for nineteen weeks and made the top-40 on the Hot 100 that summer.  Four years later, and after Phil battled partial deafness that turned out to have been complications from an infection that healed, he released his seventh studio album on Atlantic Records, Testify. The lead single from the record, like the one from his second set Hello I Must Be Going!, was a cover, but instead of redoing a Motown classic like "You Can't Hurry Love", Collins remade a song that was only a success in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. "Can't Stop Loving You", written by William Nichols originally for his own act White Horse, was a British top ten hit for Leo Sayer in 1978, reaching #6...

Phil's version, which he produced with Rob Cavallo, who is more known for his work with rock acts like Green Day and the Goo Goo Dolls, substitutes the organic country-pop of Sayer's take with a cold robotic production prevalent in the time for "older acts trying to seem younger" (looking at Celine Dion). And he adds a bridge which borders on stalkerish and would have been better left off. Still, Phil is a pro, as well as Cavallo, and although it's not outstanding it's definitely not embarrassing. It looks like Atlantic poured some big bucks into the music video hoping for momentum from Tarzan, but that was four years ago, and mainstream pop radio at the time was really ageist...

 

 While Phil's take on "Can't Stop Loving You" missed Billboard magazine's Mainstream Top-40 airplay chart completely, the song was huge on the "older-skewing" formats, spending 60 weeks on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") chart with a week at #1, and getting to #38 on the Adult Top-40 format. However, even with that the song stalled in the bottom quarter of the Hot 100 in Feburary of 2003. Internationally, where they are more forgiving for veterans, the single reached the top ten in Poland (#1 Airplay), France (#3), the Netherlands (#3), Czechia (#6), Belgium (#7 Wallonia/#16 Flanders), and Hungary (#9). It also made the top-40 in Germany (#11), Italy (#20), Sweden (#20), Austria (#23), Switzerland (#23), the United Kingdom (#28), and Ireland (#39). The Testify album, released in November of 2002, peaked at #30 on the Billboard 200 sales tally.

The second single promoted in America from Testify was "Come With Me", which rose to #16 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. Meanwhile, in the UK, a single featuring two songs they were pushing, "The Least You Can Do" and "Wake Up Call", was a minor hit on the British Singles list at #86. 

(4/10)

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The song made enough of an impression Taylor Swift for her to cover the song on her appearance on BBC radio in 2019...

 

 Lastly, here's Phil on tour behind the Testify album...