Song of the Day 7/17: Mr. Big, “To Be With You”

Most of the world considers Mr. Big a one-hit wonder. The Los Angeles-based glam-metal band, active through the ’90s, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in 1991 with an acoustic power ballad, “To Be With You.” The song also reached No. 1 in 14 other countries, notably including Japan.

“To Be With You” appeared on the band’s second LP, “Lean Into It,” their only album to chart in the Top 20 in the US. Technically, they’re not a one-hit wonder because the follow-up single from that album went to No. 16, but they didn’t release another LP for two years, and by then grunge had happened. The audience for glam-metal evaporated overnight in America — but not in Japan.

In Japan, Mr. Big stayed BIG. After their debut, every one of their albums, even the ones recorded in recent years after the band reformed, hit the Top 10. No lie, check out the entry for “big in Japan” on Wikipedia. The photo shows Mr. Big.

If “To Be With You” sounds like a teen lament, it’s because frontman Eric Martin was still a teenager when he wrote it, more than a decade before its release. The emotion comes from a real place. “This girl had a lot of boyfriends who treated her like shit,” Martin said. “I wanted to be the knight in shining armor, wanted to be with her. She wasn’t having it. It never came to play.”

I often chide record executives for not recognizing hits, but in this case nobody with either the record company or the band considered the song a single. Bassist Billy Sheehan explained, “We had another single. But some guy in Lincoln, Neb., just started playing the song, and the record started selling like crazy. It spread to Omaha and went all over the country.”