Stronger with Each Tear

Background

Blige started working on her ninth album while she toured with Robin Thicke in 2008. In an interview with Rap-Up magazine she said:

The album was initially titled Stronger after the song, "Stronger" which Blige recorded and released as the lead single from the soundtrack Music Inspired by More Than a Game from the LeBron James' documentary More Than a Game. However Rap-Up later revealed that the album had been re-titled Stronger with Each Tear.

The album has production and writing credits from Ryan Leslie, Darkchild and Johntá Austin. Also included are several guests like the Canadian rapper Drake who appears on the first single "The One", rapper T.I. who appears on "Good Love" which was initially planned as the second single and Trey Songz himself revealed that he had recorded a duet called "Hood Love" with Blige for the album. The song was previously recorded by Austin and Blige for Austin's first solo album that was never released. The song has since been reworked and re-titled "We Got Hood Love". Following the album's release in the US, the song charted at 82 on the Hot R&B/Hip Hop Songs chart due to strong digital downloads. The album track "I Feel Good" entered the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at number 83 on the issue dated February 6, 2010, and on the issue dated March 6, 2010, it reached a peak of number 68. whilst "Good Love" featuring T.I. entered the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at number 59 and was on the charts for around eleven weeks with a peak of 58.

Australian media outlets revealed that the international version of the album would be released with an altered track listing. The new version of the album had a duet version of the song "Each Tear" with the Australian artist Vanessa Amorosi. There are also four other versions of the track performed by the Italian singer Tiziano Ferro and the UK singer Jay Sean, Rea Garvey and K'naan. According to HMV, it would also include cover versions of the Led Zeppelin song "Stairway to Heaven", "Whole Lotta Love" and the song "Stronger" from the soundtrack More Than a Game. The international version of the album does not include "Said and Done", "We Got Hood Love" and "Kitchen".

Release and promotion

The album was originally scheduled for US release on November 24, 2009 but this was pushed back to December 15, 2009 which would have put Blige's album in a chart battle with Alicia Keys' album The Element of Freedom. The album was pushed back once more to December 21, 2009.

After a number of appearances to promote the song "Stronger" for the soundtrack Music Inspired by More Than a Game, Blige formally began the album's promotion in America by premiering the second single "I Am" at the American Music Awards (2009). The following day she appeared on the Lopez Tonight show for an interview and encore performance of "I Am". Blige also appeared on The Jay Leno Show, The Today Show, and was also on a special shown on BET named Words & Sounds With Mary J. Blige. She was on a taping of The View. On April 21, 2010 Blige appeared on American Idol's charity telethon, Idol Gives Back to perform her cover of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" with Orianthi and Randy Jackson on guitars.

On April 13, 2010, Blige appeared on an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show where she performed "Each Tear" and her version of the "Stairway to Heaven", which appears on the Stronger with Each Tear international edition and on iTunes as a digital single.

Singles

Critical reception

Reviewers' response to the album was mostly positive, holding a score of 75 (out of 100) on music review aggregation website Metacritic. Andy Kellman from Allmusic said "Stronger with Each Tear is a very good Blige album, if not quite a classic. One of her briefest sets, it is tremendously (almost studiously) balanced between all the ground she has covered so well before. That's no criticism, though, since most of the songs are easily memorable and display so much range. Those who detest "The One" on principle, for its use of Auto-Tune, need only to forward to the album's final song, a quiet and sparse throwback (to 40-plus years ago) production from Raphael Saadiq in which Blige professes new love to chilling effect." Mikael Wood from Spin magazine also liked the album saying "Mary J. Blige has spent the past decade effecting a slow transformation from R&B's queen of pain to the closest thing the genre counts to Oprah Winfrey. Judging by the titles on Blige's latest, that transformation is almost complete: 'Good Love,' 'I Feel Good,' 'I Love U (Yes I Du).' It's hard to believe this is the same woman who once felt the need to announce she was done with drama. Yet despite the conviction that those track names suggest—and despite solid writing and production contributions from A-listers [...] it feels less vital than 2005's terrific The Breakthrough or 2007's Growing Pains [...] The result is minor Mary—strong by many standards, a bit tepid by hers." In his Consumer Guide, Robert Christgau offered the description, "plainspoken, low-drama, midtempo love vows, with attempted glamour relegated to the cover shoot", while naming "Tonight" and "I Am" as the record's highlights.

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart with first-week sales of 332,000 copies. It also went to number one on the R&B chart. Blige is the ninth woman in SoundScan's 18-year history to see at least three albums all debut with an opening sales week of 300,000 or more. Stronger with Each Tear had sold 726,100 copies in the United States by April 2010, and was certified Gold by the RIAA on January 6, 2011.

In the UK, it debuted at number 33 on the main albums chart in its first week but dropped out of the top forty on its second week. On the UK R&B Chart it debuted at number four and fell nine places to number 13 in its second week.

Track listing

^ The international version of the album is the same as the UK version.