Post by erik on May 7, 2022 12:17:41 GMT -5
The biggest pop crossover hit for 1990's female country music mega-star Trisha Yearwood is in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight, and it came about in one of the most roundabout ways imaginable.
HOW DO I LIVE? (Trisha Yearwood; MCA Nashville; 1997)—It isn’t all that often in the history of popular music that we’ve ever had two conflicting versions of the same song by two artists of the same gender. But this is what we had during the spring of 1997, as the result of an already-popular songwriter in the personage of Diane Warren, and a typically violent 1990’s action film called Con Air. The film, directed by Simon West and produced by Hollywood producing heavyweight Jerry Bruckheimer, involved a prison break aboard a Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System aircraft, hence the film’s title, and starred Nicolas Cage and John Malkovich. Warren had bumped into LeAnn Rimes, a then-emerging young female country artist and told her that she had written “How Do I Live?”, the song in question, for that film, and had Rimes in mind for recording the song. Complications, however, arose when Walt Disney Pictures, the parent company of the film’s releasing arm Touchstone, thought that Rimes was far too young (at the age of 14) to be singing about such intimate subject matters. Instead, another version was recorded by Trisha Yearwood, a far more experienced singer in the country music genre. While both singers recorded the song, neither version of “How Do I Live?” actually appears on the film’s soundtrack, where the music score was composed and performed by Trevor Rubin and Mark Mancina. The controversy between these two versions, at least in terms of the Hot 100, strongly favored Rimes, whose pop ballad version reached a #2 peak for five weeks in the summer of 1997 (#43 C&W). Yearwood’s version, however, was no slouch either, as it hit #2 on the country chart, and #23 on the Hot 100 at the same time. The particular chart placement of Yearwood’s version made “How Do I Live?” her biggest crossover hit, and her only Top 40 pop hit as of 2022, putting her far short of the twenty-one Top 40 hits that her spiritual role model Linda Ronstadt enjoyed. But like Linda, the majority of Trisha’s success was as an album artist; and in many ways, while Trisha’s career thrived into the 21st century, Rimes’ career hasn’t really recovered since the Con Air controversy.
HOW DO I LIVE? (Trisha Yearwood; MCA Nashville; 1997)—It isn’t all that often in the history of popular music that we’ve ever had two conflicting versions of the same song by two artists of the same gender. But this is what we had during the spring of 1997, as the result of an already-popular songwriter in the personage of Diane Warren, and a typically violent 1990’s action film called Con Air. The film, directed by Simon West and produced by Hollywood producing heavyweight Jerry Bruckheimer, involved a prison break aboard a Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System aircraft, hence the film’s title, and starred Nicolas Cage and John Malkovich. Warren had bumped into LeAnn Rimes, a then-emerging young female country artist and told her that she had written “How Do I Live?”, the song in question, for that film, and had Rimes in mind for recording the song. Complications, however, arose when Walt Disney Pictures, the parent company of the film’s releasing arm Touchstone, thought that Rimes was far too young (at the age of 14) to be singing about such intimate subject matters. Instead, another version was recorded by Trisha Yearwood, a far more experienced singer in the country music genre. While both singers recorded the song, neither version of “How Do I Live?” actually appears on the film’s soundtrack, where the music score was composed and performed by Trevor Rubin and Mark Mancina. The controversy between these two versions, at least in terms of the Hot 100, strongly favored Rimes, whose pop ballad version reached a #2 peak for five weeks in the summer of 1997 (#43 C&W). Yearwood’s version, however, was no slouch either, as it hit #2 on the country chart, and #23 on the Hot 100 at the same time. The particular chart placement of Yearwood’s version made “How Do I Live?” her biggest crossover hit, and her only Top 40 pop hit as of 2022, putting her far short of the twenty-one Top 40 hits that her spiritual role model Linda Ronstadt enjoyed. But like Linda, the majority of Trisha’s success was as an album artist; and in many ways, while Trisha’s career thrived into the 21st century, Rimes’ career hasn’t really recovered since the Con Air controversy.