"I Want You So Bad" by Heart

Song#:  3421

Date:  02/20/1988

Debut:  80

Peak:  49

Weeks:  9

Genre:  Rock

Pop Bits:  The third single from Heart's album Bad Animals, "There's the Girl," just missed out on the Pop Top 10 peaking at #12. With that song doing well, it was an easy call to squeak out a fourth single and this ballad was selected for release. Unfortunately, it seems it wasn't the right song for the job as it stopped short of the Pop Top 40 and failed to make the Rock and AC charts. Still, the album was a solid success for the band selling over three million copies. This song would be Heart's final one to reach the Pop chart in the 80s.

ReduxReview:  This song was written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, the team behind Heart's #1 hit "Alone," and it was probably decided early on that this would be a single. Unfortunately, it wasn't one of their best compositions. It was an okay track and fine for the album, but it was not a good single. The song just wanders about and never really goes anywhere. It's quite dull and drab. Bad Animals wasn't as singles deep as their previous self-titled album, but you'd think that the band (or their label) would have gotten hold of one more sure-fire single. They had the resources at the time. Still, the first three singles did a good job in getting the album sold so it wasn't the end of the world that this tune tanked. Heart's next couple of albums didn't thrill me, but they came back sounding fresh as ever and more like themselves with 2004's Jupiter's Darling. It was a terrific return to form that was followed up by one of my fave Heart albums, 2010's Red Velvet Car.

ReduxRating:  3/10

Trivia:  Heart would return with another hit album in 1990. Brigade would follow in the footsteps of their previous two mainstream rock albums and featured a chunk of songs by outside writers including Diane Warren, Holly Knight, Kelly & Steinberg, and Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who wrote the first single "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You." That track would nearly become Heart's third #1. It stopped just shy at #2. The hit would help the album get to #3 and go double-platinum. After the trio of label/hit driven albums that pushed the band's popularity to a new peak, Ann and Nancy Wilson got back to writing more songs and doing things more their way. 1993's Desire Walks On was mostly all written by the sisters and although it would be gold seller, it was unable to secure a significant hit and with that, the band's days at Capital Records came to an end. Heart would continue to record over the years with their most successful being 2010's #10 Red Velvet Car.

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