30th Anniversary • Anita Baker’s ‘Giving You the Best That I Got’

This past Monday [September 24, 2018], I mentioned the one-year anniversary of Progressives Chat. That was exactly one year this past Tuesday [September 25]. Today [Thursday, September 27] is the 30th anniversary of the release of Anita Baker’s “Giving You the Best That I Got.”

This is a personal thing with me because of timing. 30 years ago, this month, I entered my senior year in high school with the 1988–89 season. When one thinks back to some particular points in time, one can also think about the music from that period.

I took an immediate liking to Anita Baker with her 1986 album Rapture. It included memorable songs “Sweet Love,” “Caught Up in the Rapture,” and “Same Ole Love (365 Days a Year).” Her follow-up, Giving You the Best That I Got, included “Just Because,” “Good Love,” and the LP’s title track. While “Sweet Love” won Baker the 1986 Grammys for R&B Song, the entire LP won her Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and she repeated winning those same categories, for the year 1988, for “Giving You the Best That I Got.” She went further than that. Heading toward those 1988 Grammys, which were broadcast February 22, 1989, it was obvious Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” and Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” were frontrunners for slots in Record of the Year and Song of the Year. As expected, they landed nominations. But, only one more recording also received nominations for both prizes. It was “Giving You the Best That I Got.” (The other four combined slots for Record and Song went to separate titles.) Credit for writing this tune, along with Baker, also goes to Randy Holland and Skip Scarborough. (Both categories were won by McFerrin.) And I will share the song’s video posted above.

Relating this to politics: I had this unintentionally funny conversation with another person in 2016. As I was mentioning my disgust for David Brock, I asked the person, who was a supporter of Hillary Clinton, “Doesn’t it bother you that Hillary Clinton hired for her campaign the man who smeared Anita Baker in the early-1990s?” I meant to say Anita Hill. I tripped. And it was too late. I walked right into the following response: “He was…Giving Her the Best That He’s Got.”