Twostepcublog

    " You Raise Me Up " - Josh Groban from the album Closer (2003) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #73    This week's "robbed hit" comes from singer and actor Josh Groban , who grew up in Los Angeles and started music and acting and a very young age. Although he had started college to study music, he left quickly after being taken under the wing of uber-producer David Foster. Josh got his first big break when he covered for an absent Andrea Bocelli at the Grammy Awards rehearsals in 1999, singing "The Prayer" with Celine Dion that got him to appear on the Rosie O'Donnell Show . With that exposure, he was discovered by TV producer David Kelley, who wrote Groban into the hit TV show Ally McBeal .  Signed to Warner Brothers Records, Josh released his eponymous debut album in 2001. A song from the record, " To Where You Are ", was also featured on Ally McBeal , and helped it top Billboard magazine's Adult Contemporary chart for two weeks in ...

    " Runnin' (Dying To Live) " - 2Pac featuring Notorious B.I.G. from the album Tupac: Resurrection (Soundtrack) (2003) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #19 (one week) Weeks in the Top-40: 11   Today's song featured two hip-hop music icons that had passed in the previous decade, Tupac ( 2Pac ) Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. , who were gunned down in 1996 and 1997 respectively.  While Biggie, who was on Sean "P Diddy" Combs' Bad Boy label, hadn't really been in the spotlight, with his last hit as a lead artist, " Going Back To Cali " reaching the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the beginning of 1998, though Diddy slipped a snippet of him into his own top-20 single " Victory " later that spring. Meanwhile Tupac, whose Makaveli album Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory , was released at the time of his death, saw Interscope Records and his estate mine his jettisoned material for four posthumous album releases as well as a Gr...

    " Lose Yourself " - Eminem from the album 8 Mile: Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture (2002) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (twelve weeks) Weeks in the Top-40: 21   Today's song comes from Eminem , who had solidified his position within both the hip-hop and the mainstream music communities with his fourth studio album The Eminem Show , which by the fall of 2002 had spun off two top ten crossover hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 with the puerile " Without Me " and the soul-exposing " Cleaning Out My Closet ".  But even before the recording of that album, Marshall Mathers had started the process of bringing together a loosely-autobiographical film about his life, 8 Mile , named for the stretch of road M-102 that separated the predominantly black residents of Detroit from the white neighborhoods and suburbs. Eminem himself starred as "Jimmy", who dreamed of becoming a successful rapper despite his turbulent upbringing and ra...

    " Only Time " - Enya from the album A Day Without Rain (2000) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (three weeks) Weeks in the Top-40: 22   Today's song comes from Irish Celtic pop/new-age artist Enya , whose second solo album after leaving the group Clannad, Watermark , had unexpectedly spun off a top-40 pop crossover hit with the lush vocal masterpiece " Orinoco Flow (Sail Away) " in the spring of 1989. Two years later, she returned with her third effort, Shepherd Moon , which sold over four million copies and reached #17 on the Billboard 200 (the low rank is deceiving since it spend a massive 238 weeks on the chart). The lead single from the record, " Caribbean Blue ", an attempt to recreate the magic of "Orinoco Flow", did more modestly, reaching #79 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100, though it got decent airplay on Alternative Rock radio, spending four weeks at #3 on that chart, as well as getting to #29 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40...

    " There You'll Be " - Faith Hill from the album Pearl Harbor (Original Soundtrack) (2001) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (one week) Weeks in the Top-40: 9   Today's song comes from country music star Faith Hill , whose fourth studio album Breathe had scored three hits in the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart, with " If My Heart Had Wings ", " The Way You Love Me ", and " Breathe ", with the latter becoming the biggest "pop" hit in the trade bible for 2000. However that massive mainstream success created a bit of resentment in Nashville, for some reason (ahem, the patriarchy ), even though her husband Tim McGraw had a lot of pop success without consequences (at least for awhile). Her next move probably didn't help much - a Diane Warrren-written power-ballad for the Ben Affleck movie Pearl Harbor in the spring of 2001. "There You'll Be", produced by Trevor Horn (of Yes and the Buggles) and By...

    " The Light " - Common from the album Like Water For Chocolate (2000) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44    This week's "robbed hit" comes from rapper and actor Common , who grew up Lonnie Rashid Lynn in Chicago, where he started his music career at first as a part of a local group before heading out solo under the moniker Common Sense. Signed by the indie label Relativity, he released his debut single " Take It EZ " in September of 1992, which went to #5 on Billboard magazine's Rap Singles chart. His first album, Can I Borrow A Dollar? , followed a month later, and got to #70 on Billboard 's R&B Albums sales tally. Common Sense's sophomore effort, "Resurrection", was even more jazz and spoken-word influenced, and placed the rapper on the Billboard 200 sales tally for the first time at #179, and into the R&B Albums top-40 at #27. Lead single " I Used To Love H.E.R ." also got him on the R&B Singles chart at ...

    " I Wanna Be With You " - Mandy Moore from the albums I Wanna Be With You and Center Stage (Original Soundtrack) (2000) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #24 (one week) Weeks in the Top-40: 4   Today's song comes from singer and actress Mandy Moore , who grew up in Florida, and had sung on some children's records before being discovered by producer/songwriters Tony Battaglia and Shaun Fisher, who helped her get signed to Epic Records as a teen. In 1999, Moore released her debut album So Real . The lead single, " Candy ", was produced by Battaglia and Fisher along with Denny Kleiman, who wrote the song with Dave Katz and "song doctor" Denise Rich. Mandy got a push from opening for NSYNC on tour, but the song unfairly stopped just short of the top-40 on Billboard magazine's official Hot 100 pop chart at #41, though the album did make the top-40 on the Billboard 200 sales tally selling almost a million copies.   Switching promotion from the 55...

    " You'll Be In My Heart " - Phil Collins from the album Tarzan (Original Soundtrack) (1999) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #21 (one week) Weeks in the Top-40: 7   Today's song comes from Phil Collins , who dominated the pop music landscape of the 1980's, but as the new decade passed was having a tougher go at it. His 1993 album Both Sides spun of two top-40 hits with " Both Sides Of The Story " and " Everyday ", but both of them stopped in the 20's on Billboard 's American Top-40. It got worse with his next effort Dance Into The Light , with the title track lead single failing to even reach the pop top-40 in 1996. Phil was nominated for a Grammy in 1997, but that was for his featured role on Quincy Jones' " Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me " from Jones' Q's Jook Joint album (the award went to Natalie Cole and the late Nat King Cole's "When I Fall In Love" for David Foster and Alan Broadbent). In...

    " When You Believe " - Whitney Houston & Mariah Carey from the albums The Prince Of Egypt (Original Soundtrack) , My Love Is Your Love , and #1's (all 1998) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #15 (two weeks) Weeks in the Top-40: 7   Today's song pairs up two of the most prominent voices in popular music, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey . In 1998, Whitney had actually been a bit absent from the charts, after her 1996 movie The Preacher's Wife had spun off a pair of hits with the Annie Lennox-written " Step By Step " and her top ten cover of " I Believe In You And Me ". Meanwhile, Mariah Carey had been riding high with her Butterfly album, which produced two #1 singles in " Honey " and " My All " along with a decent radio hit in " Butterfly ". Later in 1998, the two were brought in to record for the animated movie The Prince Of Egypt for Dreamworks Pictures. A religious telling of the Old Testament story in Exod...

    " I Don't Want To Miss A Thing " - Aerosmith from the album Armageddon: The Album (Original Soundtrack) (1998) Billboard Hot 100 peak: #1 (four week) Weeks in the Top-40: 14   Today's song of the day comes from the long-standing blues-rock band Aerosmith , whose first album after their mega-millions comeback to Columbia Records, Nine Lives , didn't match the huge success of their run of records with Geffen, but still scored a pair of top-40 pop hits with " Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees) " and the Grammy-winning " Pink ". During the time they were touring behind that album, where both lead singer Steven Tyler and drummer Joey Kramer were injured, Aerosmith contributed two new and two old songs to the sci-fi disaster movie Armageddon starring Bruce Willis and Tyler's daughter Liv. One of the new ones was a power-ballad written by song doctor supreme Diane Warren. "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing", produced by Matt Se...