The power ballad[2] is the band's biggest hit, peaking at No. 1 in the United States, Canada, Norway, and Finland, and reaching the top five in Germany, Ireland, the UK, South Africa, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Composition and recording
According to Nick Van Eede, he wrote down a lot of song titles and ideas on a sheet of wallpaper, and one of the lines written there was "I just died in your arms tonight".[3] The line came to Van Eede while he was having sex with his girlfriend; Van Eede said: "I actually remember saying that", and wrote it down.[4] He woke up in the morning, wrote the song, and recorded a demo in three days.[5] He first added some chords to the line, singing it phonetically, before adding other lines from the wallpaper to construct a song. He wrote for three or four hours before realising what he was singing about. He said: "I'd split up with my girlfriend, we'd got back together for one night and there's a lot of guilt because I should have kept my distance."[3]
He first recorded a demo in the house of his schoolfriend Pete Birch, with Birch singing harmony in the song. The band recorded the song after they were signed to Siren, part of Virgin Records, in the Mediasound Studios in New York. Van Eede was dissatisfied with the result, and tried to re-record the song in London. They could not get the harmony right in the pre-production, so producer John Jansen asked about the person who sang the harmony in the demo, and Birch was brought in, and he "sang a perfect take in four minutes".[3] Jansen, however, had to leave before the recording was finished, and Van Eede contacted Terry Brown, the producer in Canada for Van Eede's previous band, the Drivers. Brown flew to London, and recut the whole song, with the exceptions of some keyboards and vocals.[3]
The song was released in 1986. The label questioned the use of brackets for "I Just" in the title, but relented when it was pointed out such similar use in "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones.[3]
In 2024, Jax Jones, Joel Corry and Jason Derulo collaborated to create a remix version of the song called "Tonight (D.I.Y.A.)".
Music video
There were two music videos produced. The North American version featured artistic fragmented shots using a model, with the band performing to camera. The UK version was filmed in a studio, both in color as well as black and white, while only the latter had been made available in Apple Music stores, from countries like Canada[6] and Brazil.[7]
On 29 October 2020, Van Eede announced, through Cutting Crew's official Facebook page, that a remastered HD edition of the "UK version" music video was uploaded to the band's former Vevo official account on YouTube.[8]
2020 reissue
In early 2020, the song was rerecorded and reissued as in an orchestral incarnation as well as in several other versions as the lead single for the second Cutting Crew compilation album, Ransomed Healed Restored Forgiven,[9] accompanied by a new music video uploaded to YouTube,[9] through the official account of the band's new label, August Day. The new release for the hit has been through an 8-track extended play (EP) released to digital platforms.[10][11] There is also a physical release, on CD, offered as a solo release and also included as part of the limited deluxe version of the new greatest hits album, both sold through the band's official webstore.[12]
Chart performance
First released in Britain, the song peaked at No. 4 on the UK charts on 19 September 1986. Upon its release in the United States, the previously-unknown band's debut single shot to No. 1 on 2 May 1987, and stayed there for two weeks. It also reached No. 4 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, No. 24 on Billboard's Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart and (in a remix version) No. 37 on the Hot Dance/Club Play chart.[13] The song spent three weeks at number one in Canada.
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