Wiki
-
Length
4:45
“One Sweet Day” featuring Boyz II Men, was released as the second single from Mariah’s Daydream album in November 1995. She was inspired to write this song after losing her close friend and collaborator David Cole, who died in January 1995 due to complications from spinal meningitis brought on by AIDS. Mariah wanted to write (and sing) a eulogy for him and other loved ones she and her fans had lost.
It is the most commercially successful single of both Carey’s and Boys II Men’s careers. It was also a hit internationally, reaching the top 10 in Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK. Additionally, the song received critical acclaim, with critics lauding its writing and craft, as well as the sentiment behind the lyrics.
“One Sweet Day” spent 16 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart, a record that has been matched by only one other song, Despacito, which also stayed at the top for the same amount of time. “Old Town Road” officially broke the record on July 29, 2019, marking its 17th week on the Hot 100 as number one.
Mariah Carey talked about the songwriting experience in an interview with Chris Nickson, author of the book “Mariah Carey Revisited: Her Story” in 1998.
"I wrote the initial idea for ‘One Sweet Day’ with Walter (Afanasieff), and I had the chorus…and I stopped and said, ‘I really wanna do this with Boyz II Men,’ because…obviously I’m a big fan of theirs and I just thought that the work was crying out for them, the vocals that they do, so I put it away and said, ‘Who knows if this could ever happen, but I just don’t wanna finish this song because I want it to be our song if we ever do it together. whole idea of when you lose people that are close to you, it changes your life and changes your perspective. When they came into the studio, I played them the idea for the song and when was finished, they looked at each other, a bit stunned, and told me that Nat (Nathan Morris) had written a song for his road manager who had passed away. It had basically the same lyrics and fitted over the same chord changes. It was really, really weird, we finished the song right then and there. We were all kinda flipped about it ourselves. Fate had a lot to do with that. I know some people won’t believe it, but we wouldn’t make up such a crazy story."
Track descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
