"Watching Over You" by Glenn Medeiros

Song#:  3212
Date:  08/01/1987
Debut:  88
Peak:  80
Weeks:  8
Genre:  Pop, Adult Contemporary



Pop Bits:  Thanks to winning a talent contest in his home state of Hawaii, Medeiros would become a new pop star with his single "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You" reaching #12 Pop/#4 AC. The song would be included on his self-titled debut, which would get to #83. Up next was this second single from the album. The tune couldn't replicate the success of his first hit petering out low on the chart after a couple of months.

ReduxReview:  Since "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You" was a bit of an unexpected hit, Medeiros and his label had a couple of choices to follow it up. They could have gone with an upbeat track that would play to a younger audience (Medeiros was still a teen and becoming a pin-up boy), or they could try to maintain the same AC audience from his first hit and push out another ballad. Frankly, they should have done the former. Grab that teen audience with a fun, upbeat track. Instead they chose to do the latter and it didn't work. I think part of the reason for that was the song itself. While it's a very nice well-written ballad, it was just way too mature for Medeiros. The tune sounded like it should have been on a Dionne Warwick or Jeffery Osborne album. It skewed more adult and it just didn't suit the teenage vocalist. A case of a good song going to the wrong artist.

ReduxRating:  5/10

Trivia:  This song was written by Paul Gordon. Gordon had been supplying songs to artists since the late 70s. Those that have recorded his tunes include The Pointer Sisters, Kenny Rogers, James Ingram, Dionne Warwick, and Olivia Newton-John. While none of those recordings would be charting singles, Gordon would score a pair of major hits in 1986. He co-wrote "Friends and Lovers," which was a #2 Pop/#1 AC hit for Gloria Loring and Carl Anderson (also a #1 Country hit for Juice Newton and Eddie Rabbitt the same year). Gordon would also co-write the Peter Cetera/Amy Grant duet "The Next Time I Fall." That song would top both the Pop and AC charts. He continued to sell songs to artists over the years, but he moved over to writing musicals in the 90s. Gordon would write the music and lyrics to a musical version of Jane Eyre. The show would reach Broadway in 2000. While it wasn't a major success, it did well enough to secure five Tony nominations including Best Musical and Best Original Score (for Gordon). Gordon would go on to write the music and lyrics for three Jane Austen novels, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice. None would make it to Broadway. Gordon would have some success with the show Daddy Long Legs, which would have a good off-Broadway run in 2015 and would win a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical (for book writer John Caird).

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