Movie Music Monday – Shallow Hal

It was on this day in 2001 that Shallow Hall with Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow hit theaters.

One of the songs featured on the Soundtrack was a classic from the Foundations – Baby, Now That I’ve Found You.

Songfacts.com says, When this was first released there appeared to be little enthusiasm for the single until BBC’s newly founded Radio 1 began to play it. The song got onto the station’s playlist mainly because they wanted to avoid any records being played by the pirate radio broadcasters, so they looked back at recent releases that the pirates had missed. The song’s co-writer Tony Macaulay recalls in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh: “I woke up that morning with a stinking headache and when I got to the studio and heard The Foundations, I thought they were pretty terrible. I decided my hangover was to blame, and so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The only song I could think of was something John McLeod and I had had for some time, ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You.’ I didn’t have a lot of faith in the song but they recorded it with a lot of energy and I learned a lot from making that record.” It went on to become an international hit.

Clem Curtis, the lead vocalist of The Foundations recalls in the same book “Tony Macaulay gave us 2 songs. One was ‘Let The Heartaches Begin’ and the other was ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You’ and we chose ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You.’ Long John Baldry recorded the other one and that knocked us off the top.”

It would be the first song by a multiracial band to top the UK singles chart.