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Tuesday, December 15, 2020

"Could've Been" by Tiffany

#1 Alert!
Song#:  3348
Date:  11/28/1987
Debut:  86
Peak:  1 (2 weeks)
Weeks:  20
Genre:  Pop



Pop Bits:  The teen singer who gained some notoriety via a tour of shopping malls made it to the top of the Pop chart with her remake of the Tommy James & the Shondells classic "I Think We're Alone Now." It was the second single from her self-titled debut album. For a follow-up, this ballad was selected. It ended up being the right choice with the tune becoming her second #1 at Pop and her first #1 at AC. This second hit helped to push the album to #1 for two weeks in late January of '88. Three months later in April, the LP would be certified for sales of over 4 million copies.

ReduxReview:  I wasn't buying the whole Tiffany thing at the time. The weird mall tour combined with the cheezy remake of "I Think We're Alone Now" just turned me off. So when this song first came out I didn't want to have anything to do with it. But the more I heard it, the more I began to actually like it. I didn't want to, but I recognized that it was actually a well-written song. It was a fairly mature song for a 14-year old (age at time of recording) to handle, let alone understand, but Tiffany didn't do too bad of a job. I ended up buying the single and toyed with getting the album thinking there may be a couple of other good tunes on it, but then the third single came out, which was worse than "I Think We're Alone Now," and it killed that idea immediately. Still, this may be the best song that Tiffany ever recorded.

ReduxRating:  7/10

Trivia:  Double Shot!  1) With this single and the album, Tiffany set a couple of Billboard achievement records. At 16 years of age, she became the youngest artist to have two songs reach #1 and the youngest female artist to have a #1 album. She would hold the latter record until 1997 when at the age of 14, country star LeAnn Rimes reached #1 with her second album Unchained Melody: The Early Years.  2) This song was written by Lois Blaisch. Blaisch began working the clubs late in her teens and also started writing songs. Through connections, she got some work writing tunes for Disney, which included popular projects like Mousercise. In the meantime, Blaisch was still working the clubs in the LA. area, mainly as part of a duo. One evening she invited a couple of industry guys to come see her perform. At the show she played a song she wrote called "Could've Been." One of the guys loved the song and introduced Blaisch to producer George Tobin, who after hearing the tune wanted to develop Blaisch as an artist. In 1983, they recorded "Could've Been." During the recording sessions, Tobin pushed Blaisch to sign over her publishing rights to the song for three years, which she did. The pair recorded a couple of other songs and Blaisch got an offer to sign with MCA Records with Tobin producing and guiding her career. She declined because she did not like Tobin's business tactics and the two parted ways. Three years later at the time the song's publishing rights would return to Blaisch, she got a call from Tobin. He had recorded the song with Tiffany and wanted to sign another deal for publishing rights. Not wanting to let a potential opportunity slip away, Blaisch and her lawyer came up with a deal that split publishing rights for the song if it made the album, but giving Tobin full rights if the song was on a single. While the song did become a #1 single, which benefited Tobin greatly, Blaisch still did pretty well with her share of rights from a 4x platinum album. However, the kicker on this is that Tobin just reused the backing track from the Blaisch recording for Tiffany. He just had Tiffany sing over the existing track.

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2 comments:

  1. 8/10 for me, this song and "All This Time" were here best songs, I totally agree her next single "I Saw Him Standing There" was awful and not deserving of being a Top 40 hit.

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  2. "All This Time" is actually as good as this song.

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