About Jenny’s Song Of The Month – You Knock Me Off My Feet
A note from Jenny Burton: “I watched Black Girls Rock! tonight and was thrilled to see the spark in the eyes of the young girls in the audience, surrounded by a message of unadulterated empowering! I am thrilled that the message they’re getting is healthy and strong about who they really are and who they can become! I so wish that someone had done that for me. I share “You Knock Me Off My Feet” to celebrate and encourage the hopes and dreams of today’s young girls!”
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Few people know this, but for more than a decade, both Jenny and composer/lyricist/producer of this song, Peter Link, were a most successful team writing and performing inspirational songs for Fortune 500 companies on the lucrative corporate meeting circuit. Performing all over the world for the sales forces of Apple, Mastercard, Johnson and Johnson, Cadillac, and the list goes on and on, Jenny electrified these meetings of sometimes up to 25,000 people with songs written to stimulate company pride and build teamwork.
Peter was first hired because of his Broadway notoriety to write new words to a song called, “Hello Clairol” sung to the tune of “Hello Dolly”. Feeling somewhat overly commercial and watching the sales force audience not really buy into the message of the song, he decided to never put a company name or product name into a corporate song he wrote, but instead, simply write strong messages of teamwork and inspiration. This decision worked and changed the industry. In over 15 years of countless corporate meetings, he cranked out and Jenny sang song after song of Gospel, R&B and Rock songs stirring corporate audiences into powerful reactions and fierce company pride.
This song is a typical example of one of those songs – a song that could be taken as a love song between two people, or a heartwarming moment between sales force and company.
Peter says, “I once did a song for a Pepsodent meeting and watched 2000 sales people from all over the country stand and sing together along with Jenny about their love for their work. My first thought was somewhat jaded. I thought, ‘How stupid. They’re all getting carried away and all emotional singing about toothpaste.’
“Then it came to me that it was so much more than that. It was their jobs, their livelihood, their families, their life ambitions that they were singing about. This is what I wrote about in my songs from then on. And it really worked. Jenny and I were the first call team for corporate meeting entertainment in the country for many Fortune 500 companies.”
You knock me off my feet
Even in the toughest of times you’re there
Lifting me back up
With the way you care for me
And the way you help me be
All I can be
When you listen to the song, try listening twice – once as a love song between people and another time as a love song between people and an idea.
Either way, it’s a powerful song given a terrific performance by the inimitable Ms Burton.
