Just The Way It Is, Baby

Album: The Rembrandts (1990)
Charted: 14
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Songfacts®:

  • This 1990 single from The Rembrandts' self-titled debut LP hit the charts around the world and got the group's career off to a big start. It peaked at #14 in the US and charted in many other countries as well, hitting the Top 10 in France, Austria, and Germany. The lyrics are about a man who's in a dead-end relationship with a woman who used him for a casual fling and spurned his efforts to make it serious. The song ends with the woman returning to the man for another try, but he says that while he had fun with her, it's too late for anything more and "that's just the way it is." >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Mike - Santa Barbara, CA
  • Aside from being the duo's first single, it was also the first song they - Danny Wilde and Phil Solem - wrote together as the Rembrandts. According to Wilde, they wrote most of it in 2 1/2 hours and honed the lyrics for two weeks. "For Phil and I, the song's meaning is something we can relate to personally," he told the Pennsylvania publication The Morning Call in 1991. "When we do the live show, we have one person Phil and I sort of dedicate the song to, a woman named Leah who we double dated. No, it wasn't really double dating. She was going out with both of us at the same time without either of us knowing it. We haven't seen her since 1980."
  • Wilde on the moment Leah discovered her secret boyfriends knew about each other: "Phil and I both walked into a shoe store in 1979. We both said, 'Hi, Leah.' Her jaw dropped when she saw us together."
  • This was used in two episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210: "One on One" (1990) and "It's Only a Test" (1991).

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