Songoftheday 07/26/24 - I've been driving for an hour just talking to the rain, you say I've been driving you crazy and its keeping you away...

 

 

"Breathe" - Michelle Branch

from the album Hotel Paper (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

 

Today's song comes from singer/songwriter Michelle Branch, who had returned to the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in the summer of 2003 with "Are You Happy Now?".  The second single from her sophomore effort Hotel Paper was "Breathe", which Branch wrote with producer John Shanks. The lyrics seems to have Michelle at the crossroads of a relationship, She doesn't want to break up, but she needs some reassurance from her partner, and she's telling herself to calm down (and "breathe") to give them space to do so. The production is pleasant if a little generic jangle-pop, with layered vocals on the chorus doing some heavy lifting. With a music video that has Branch and her band transitioning to a sunnier place, and VH1 came on board to help her get another pop hit...

"Breathe" became Branch's fifth and final top-40 hit as a solo artist (and sixth overall) on Billboard's Hot 100 in December of 2003. On the radio, the song peaked at #18 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, #13 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 list, and #27 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") format. Dance remixes of the track, done by Chris Cox and Passengerz amongst others, helped it rise to #3 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. Internationally, the single just missed the top-40 in Australia at #46.

A third single, the sadly pretty "'Til I Get Over You", came and went mostly unnoticed.

 

In 2005, Branch paired up with Jessica Harp to form the alt-country duo the Wreckers, and released an album Stand Still, Look Pretty on Maverick Records, which went to #14 on the Billboard 200 sales chart. A song from the set, "Leave The Pieces", would bring Branch back to this series. However the project didn't last far beyond that album and another collaboration with Santana, "I'm Feeling You", that would hit #55 on the Billboard Hot 100.  

Moving to the Reprise Nashville label, Michelle came back with the EP (extended play) record Everything Comes and Goes in 2010. The lead single from the record, "Sooner Or Later", reached #35 on the Adult Top-40 radio chart and #46 on the Country Songs airplay list, but stalled down at #93 on the Hot 100. An attempt to update her sound with producer Tim "Timbaland" Mosley on "Getaway" later that year stiffed completely.  The following year, Michelle put out another extended play single on Reprise, The Loud Music EP, which had her hits plus one new song, "Loud Music", which was her most recent radio hit, peaking at #19 on the Adult Top-40 format. 

Brach re-emerged on the Verve label in 2017 for a single album, Hopeless Romantic, which spent a single week on the Billboard 200 at #143. Her most recent studio album, The Trouble With Fever,  was produced by Patrick Carney of the Black Keys and came out in 2022 on Nonesuch, with the single "I'm A Man". It's definitely worth a listen.

(6/10)

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Here's Michelle performing the song for a late night television performance...

Here's one of the club remixes, done by Carl Cox, that helped the song become Michelle's sole dance hit...

 Next up, at the Oxygen Festival in 2006....

 and lastly, an acoustic take from 2021...

Tomorrow I'll run down my top hits of this past week, then on Monday I'll be back with a country star seeing the end.