Songoftheday 5/3/24 - Since the moment I spotted you like walking around, with little wings on my shoes my stomach's filled with the butterflies...

 

 

"Why Don't You & I" - Santana featuring Alex Band or Chad Kroeger

from the album Shaman (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #8 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 29

 

Today's song comes from the veteran fusion rock band Santana, whose follow-up to one of the biggest comebacks in history, their Shaman album, had brought them back to the top ten on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the late autumn of 2002 with "The Game Of Love" featuring Michelle Branch. A second single, "Nothing At All" paired the band with neo-soul singer Musiq Soulchild and was co-written by Rob Thomas (who led them to fortune with "Smooth"). It was a pleasant enough Latin-tinged number, but it stiffed in the U.S., and only appeared on the charts in Switzerland at a measly #74. Another track, "Feels Like Fire" with British songstress Dido, wasn't put out in America, and only popped on to the New Zealand singles chart at #26.

For the third single in the States, Carlos and the band wanted to put out the song "Why Don't You & I", which on the Shaman album featured lead vocals from the song's writer, Chad Kroeger from rock music's punching bag Nickelback. But despite Chad's success apart from his band on "Hero" from the Spiderman movie franchise, which made the top 3 on the Hot 100, his label Roadrunner didn't want this interfering with their rollout of the next Nickelback album that fall. So Chad suggested another singer, Alex Band, who was the lead singer of the Calling, who had their own top ten hit in the spring of 2002 with "Wherever You Will Go". The result was "Why Don't You & I", a straightforward pop-rock song in the Matchbox Twenty or Hootie-style vein. And maybe it was good for Nickelback to separate Chad from this, since it's a bubbly love song albeit with Santana's classic Latin rock groove to it. But his darker more gravelly vocals ground it more than Alex's more lighter gruff. But CD singles needed to be sold, and with radio favoring Chad's and the sales points from Alex's, Santana found themselves back in the top ten...

"Why Don't You & I" reached the top ten on Billboard's Hot 100 in October of 2003. On the radio, the song climbed to #3 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, topped the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format for nine weeks (spending over a year on the chart), and hit #16 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") airplay list. Internationally, the single peaked at #21 in New Zealand.

This would be Alex Band's final appearance in the series, but Santana and Kroeger will be back together again here.

Chad's Version: 7/10                                           Alex's Version: 4/10

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

For comparison, here's the album version with Chad Kroeger....

And lastly, Santana and Band on Good Morning America....

 

 Tomorrow I'll roll out my top hits of this week, then on Monday SOTD will be back with a boybander serenading a south of the border sexpot.