Tag: Santana

Blog, Song Lyric Sunday

Song Lyric Sunday – Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda!

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This week’s Song Lyric Sunday is about songs originally offered to one or more artists and got turned down only to be recorded by someone else resulting in the song becoming a big hit. Researching this subject I found plenty of songs that were recorded fairly recently and I was surprised at how many hits by Rihanna were actually intended for someone else. Same goes for Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, even Adele. I was trying to find something from much earlier but did not, so I’m hoping a fellow blogger will surprise me here today.

My thanks to Fandango for hosting today’s SLS while Jim takes a vacation.

The song I have chosen is a Santana and Michelle Branch collaboration, the Game of Love, which Santana had originally wanted Tina Turner to record with him. However, record producer Clive Davis, rejected the idea because he wanted someone younger to appeal to a more youthful audience. Although Songfacts doesn’t mention it, there was a suggestion, from another source, that the song was offered to Rob Thomas. He evidently turned it down because he thought it would be regarded as Smooth 2, his earlier mega hit with Santana. Who knows for sure? As it turned out Clive Davis was right. The finished product with Michelle Branch’s lovely voice and Santana’s magic made it a big hit.

The Song

Gregg Alexander, who records as The New Radicals (“You Get What You Give”) wrote this song with Rick Nowels, whose co-writes include “Standing Still” for Jewel and “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” for Belinda Carlisle. Alexander recorded a demo, and the song sat around for about a year until Nowels’ manager sent the song to Clive Davis, head of Arista Records, when Santana was looking for songs. With no Latin flavor, it was an unlikely song for Carlos Santana to record, but he went for it, making it the first single from his group’s album Shaman, the follow-up to their 1999 blockbuster Supernatural.
This song is about the conflicted emotions that go along with love. The way this story plays out, it was love at first sight (“One kiss and boom you’re the only one for me”) but now they’re apart. The soothing melody belies a dark lyric, as the singer seems kind of dependent:

You roll me
Control me
Console me
Please hold me
You guide me
Divide me into me

She figures it’s all in the game of love, but he might have other ideas.
Michelle Branch is the lead vocalist on this song. She earned an audition through the song’s writer, Gregg Alexander, who suggested her – members of his band The New Radicals also played in Branch’s touring band. “I didn’t think I got it,” Branch told Songfacts. “I was really nervous. I went on tour and thought that was the end of it, and then I got a call saying they loved my version and they had decided that I was the singer.

The next thing you know, I was going to Chicago to film the music video. The first time I met Carlos was on set for ‘The Game Of Love.'”
Branch was still a teenager when she recorded her vocal, but she had the poise and confidence to suggest a change to the lyric. Instead of “a little bit of laughs,” she wanted “a little bit of lust,” and the line “I’m telling you my babe” changed to “I’m turning in my bed.” Her suggestions were politely declined.

In her Songfacts interview, she said: “I was thinking of being lovesick, unable to sleep, turning in the bed. Like lusting after someone. But they wanted it a little more lighthearted. But I love the song and I’m honored that I was chosen to sing it.”

Tina Turner was reportedly Santana’s first choice as vocalist and even recorded it with him. Details are sketchy, but it seems label boss Clive Davis rejected Turner and went with Branch for youth appeal; most of Santana’s hits around this time were with vocalists a generation younger than him, like Rob Thomas and Wyclef Jean.

The Tina Turner version was finally released in 2007 as part of the Ultimate Santana collection. When it was issued, Santana made this statement to the Associated Press:

“Queens come and go – there’s only one Tina Turner. I love Michelle, and she did a great interpretation of it. It’s just that with all honor and respect to Michelle, there’s the girl and there’s the woman, and Michelle is unfolding into a woman. But it takes time to go from a girl to a woman.”

Michelle Branch released her breakthrough album The Spirit Room in 2001 when she was 18. “The Game Of Love” gave her next one, Hotel Paper, released in 2003, a nice push – it went to #2 in the US and sold a million copies.

The video was directed by Paul Fedor, who was known for darker fare like Alice in Chains’ “Get Born Again” and Marilyn Manson’s “The Nobodies.” The “Game Of Love” video shows Santana and Branch performing the song on the streets of Chicago as a number of couples suck face.

Michelle Branch was an excellent pairing for Santana. She was a TRL favorite with a young, female fanbase, but sounded great to the ears of Santana fans, who were much older. Branch wrote her own songs and was a student of emotions, able to sing convincingly about romantic love before she had experienced it herself. She could also play acoustic guitar, providing a nice symmetry in the video while Carlos Santana played electric.

Branch did so well that when Santana released their next album, All That I Am, in 2005, she once again got the call to sing the first single, “I’m Feeling You.” She was the only guest vocalist to appear on both the Shaman and All That I Am albums.

The song’s co-writer Gregg Alexander was a bit of mystery man around this time, having moved to London where he wrote songs under assumed names. For this one, he used Alex Ander.
Michelle Branch joined Santana from time to time to perform this song on the group’s 2002 tour; they first performed it together in Los Angeles on October 12.
Branch was thrilled to record with Santana; her mom used to play their 1970 album Abraxas in the house.

Courtesy of Songfacts

The Lyrics

Tell me
Just what you want me to be
One kiss
And boom you're the only one for me
So please tell me
Why don't you come around no more?
'Cause right now
I'm crying outside the door of your candy store

It just takes a little bit of this, a little bit of that
It started with a kiss
Now we're up to bat
A little bit of laughs, a little bit of pain
I'm telling you my babe
It's all in the game of

Love is
Whatever you make it to be
Sunshine
Instead of this cold lonely sea
So please baby
Try and use me for what I'm good for
It ain't saying goodbye
It's knocking down the door of your candy store

It just takes a little bit of this, a little bit of that
It started with a kiss
Now we're up to bat
A little bit of laughs, a little bit of pain
I'm telling you baby
It's all in the game of love
It's all in this game of love

You roll me
Control me
Console me
Please hold me
You guide me
Divide me
Into me

So please tell me
Why don't you come around no more?
'Cause right now
I'm dying outside the door of your loving store

It just take a little bit of this, a little bit of that
It started with a kiss
Now we're up to bat
A little bit of laughs, a little bit of pain
I'm telling you my babe
It's all in the game of love
All in this game of love
It's all in the game of love
Let's play the game of love

Roll me
Control me
Please hold me
I'm out here on my own
On my own

Writer/s: Gregg Alexander, Richard Nowels 
Publisher: BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Spirit Music Group
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind
Blog, Song Lyric Sunday

Song Lyric Sunday – Smooth

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We have been prompted with one word titles this week for Song Lyric Sunday challenge, hosted by our good friend Jim Adams. I have to go with the perennial Santana and “Smooth” featuring Rob Thomas. It’s hard for me to believe that this song is over 20 years old already! I hope you enjoy it. I know I never get tired of listening to it.

Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty wrote this with Itaal Shur, a songwriter and producer who has worked with Jewel, Robi Rosa and Maxwell (co-writing his first hit, “Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder).” Shur said in a Songfacts interview: “I was already active in the music business. I had some hit records with Maxwell and I was already touring the world with Groove Collective, so people knew me more in the underground scene, but I wasn’t as big as Rob Thomas, of course. My manager at the time told me that Pete Ganbarg, who was working at the time at Arista, he was looking for music for the new Santana record. At the time, I had my own band and was performing a lot around the city. I jumped at it because I grew up with an older brother who hipped me up to classic rock and I always loved Santana.

I went up to the office and I wanted to hear what they had first to see what kind of direction they were going for, and when I went up there I heard the Wyclef track, I heard the Dave Matthews track, I heard a couple of other tracks, and I realized there wasn’t the kind of track that was, in my opinion, a standard Santana groove like ‘Black Magic Woman,’ ‘Oye Como Va,’ ‘Evil Ways.’ So I went home and wrote this track on guitar with all the arrangements called ‘Room One Seven.’ It was about this couple that meet after a long time and have a little tryst in the hotel room.

I brought it to Arista and they loved the instrumental and they liked parts of the melodies, but they didn’t like the lyrics – they thought it was a little too sexual for Santana – so they asked me if I wanted to work with Rob Thomas. I didn’t know him; I’d heard a little bit about Matchbox Twenty. He happened to live at the time in Soho very close to me. He came over and he had already written the verses to the instrumental that Arista gave him. I had a chorus that had the same melody: ‘Room One Seven on the seventeenth floor. Take the elevator and I’ll meet you at the door.’ He didn’t have a chorus, so before he came, I changed the words around to, ‘Give me the ocean, give me the moon, give me something hot to make my body move,’ and this turned into the chorus that we all know.”

Thomas sang lead on this, but that wasn’t the plan. He had never written a song for someone else before, so he jumped at the chance to write a song with Shur for Santana, figuring it would boost his songwriting bona fides. When they finished the song, Thomas suggested George Michael, one of his musical heroes, as the vocalist. Arista Records ended up asking Thomas to do the vocals, and when he did, it was in Michael’s style. “If you listen to the melody and the cadence, it’s an attempt to emulate his style in so many ways,” he told Billboard.

When Thomas launched his solo career a few years later, he once again emulated Michael, who also made the transition from a group (Wham!) to a solo artist.

Many of the lyrics are Thomas’ ode to his wife, the former Marisol Maldonado, who is Puerto Rican. “My Mu Equita” translates to “My Little Doll” in Spanish; Thomas also calls her his “Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa.” Marisol appears in the video.

GQ published an “oral history” satire of this song in 2016, which is filled with confabulations like this quote from Rob Thomas: “I didn’t even know who Carlos Santana was at this point. I actually thought he was the guy that who was in charge of Libya.”

The song’s co-writer Itaal Shur told us: “The guitar solo from my demo, Santana copied that solo, which was a huge compliment and all the breaks were also on my demo. It was really weird, my demo was kind of like a template for the live band to play. They sped up the song two beats: it was like at 1/13 and went to 1/15 and it went from A Flat Minor to A Minor. They played it as a band and recorded it all live, pretty much. Me and Rob, when we were writing the song, the verses were fine, but we went through about four or five changes with the record company; from like, ‘Give me the ocean, give me the moon,’ ‘You’re just like the ocean…’ Pete Ganbarg, who if it wasn’t for him this song wouldn’t have come together because he put me and Rob together, he said some really good comments about the lyrics – he was an English major and really picky about lyrics. It was a really good collaboration.”

This won Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year at the 2000 Grammys. Supernatural also won for Best Rock Album and Album Of The Year. >>

Clive Davis is a legendary record executive who was the mastermind behind this album. Santana had not had a hit since “Hold On” in 1982, so Davis teamed him up with contemporary musicians like Wyclef Jean, Everlast and Lauryn Hill to make sure the younger generation took notice. The result was a wildly successful album that went over well with Santana’s old fans and created a legion of new ones. This was the first single, and it spent 12 weeks at #1 in the US.

Santana has the distinction of waiting the longest between his first charting single and first #1 hit. In 1969, “Tango” hit #56 in the US, and 30 years later this was #1.

The trend of aging rockers calling in hot young artists to give them contemporary appeal became known in the music press as “The Carlos Santana Effect,” thanks to his Supernatural success.

Marcus Raboy directed the music video. He also did the video for the Supernatural track “Maria Maria.”

Looking back on the song in 2020, Thomas told Songfacts: “I believe the best part of the whole process is that Carlos and I have become so close that we communicate just about every day. Always sending silly messages or song ideas or pics from our day. He’s been a great mentor but an even greater friend.”

Thomas found out this had been released as a single when he was standing on a street corner in Manhattan. A convertible full of girls pulled up with the song blasting on the car radio. He knew it was really big when he went to Los Angeles a short time later and encountered Jason Newsted of Metallica coming out of an elevator. Thomas told CBC Radio: “He came out of an elevator and was like, ‘Hey Rob’ – and I’d never met him – ‘Hey Rob, man, love that Carlos song.’ And I was like, ‘Alright, this has gone from New York hot girls to Metallica. There’s something happening here.”

LYRICS

Man, it's a hot one
Like seven inches from the midday sun
Well, I hear you whispering in the words, to melt everyone
But you stay so cool
My muñequita, my Spanish Harlem, Mona Lisa
You're my reason for reason
The step in my groove

And if you said this life ain't good enough
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood
Because you're so smooth

And it's just like the ocean under the moon
Oh, it's the same as the emotion that I get from you
You got the kind of lovin' that can be so smooth, yeah
Give me your heart, make it real or else forget about it

But I'll tell you one thing
If you would leave it would be a crying shame
In every breath and every word
I hear your name calling me out
Out from the barrio
You hear my rhythm on your radio
You feel the turning of the world, so soft and slow
It's turning you round and round

And if you said this life ain't good enough
I would give my world to lift you up
I could change my life to better suit your mood
Because you're so smooth

And it's just like the ocean under the moon
Oh, it's the same as the emotion that I get from you
You got the kind of lovin' that can be so smooth, yeah
Give me your heart, make it real or else forget about it

And it's just like the ocean under the moon
Oh, it's the same as the emotion that I get from you
You got the kind of lovin' that can be so smooth, yeah
Give me your heart, make it real or else forget about it

Or else forget about it
Or else forget about it
Let's not forget about it
Give me your heart, make it real
Let's not forget about it
Let's not forget about it
Let's not forget about it
Let's not forget about it
Let's not forget about it

Courtesy of Songfacts

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