Stronger with Each Tear is the ninth studio album from American R&B and soul singer-songwriter Mary J. Blige. The album was released in the US on December 21, 2009, under Blige's own imprint, Matriarch Records. Internationally it was released December 18, 2009, in Australia and Germany, December 21 in France, December 23 in Japan, and on February 2, 2010, in Korea with further international releases (in some cases re-releases) in March, April and May 2010. With this album, Blige achieved a record of nine albums to have debuted at the top of the US R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

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 represents who and what I am right now. I'm a stronger human being after all the growing pains. It's about life, love, change, strength—mostly really knowing who you are and being confident in that 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 removed the songs "Said and Done", "We Got Hood Love" and "Kitchen" from the tracklist, and replaced them with "Whole Lotta Love", "I Can't Wait", "City on Fire", "Stronger", "Stairway to Heaven" and a remix of "I Am" by Dave Audé.

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

Stronger with Each Tear received generally favorable reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 75 based on twelve reviews. Andy Kellman from AllMusic called "Stronger with Each Tear 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." Boston Globe critic Sarah Rodman found that the album was a "reminder that Blige gets stronger with each album", further noting: "The queen of hip-hop soul splits her loyalty between three masters with the agility of a gymnast, but she manages to hold a mood with seamless transitions between each." Similarly, Billboard wrote: "Like fine wine and Brett Favre, some things just get better with time [...] Blige has never been in better voice-or more adventurous." Margaret Wapplerf from The Los Angeles Times felt that Stronger with Each Tear finds Blige "as in touch with that resilient truth as ever, her personal discoveries bound in slick but never alienating packaging." USA Today editor Steve Jones remarked that the album "finds the now-mature Blige happy, confident and ready to have some fun." While he felt that the "upbeat songs don't lend themselves to the emotional torrents that used to flow from her regularly," a "stellar list of producers and songwriters [...] give her plenty of radio-friendly beats in keeping with the album's overall positive vibe." BBC Music critic Daryl Easlea called it a "body of work that is one of the strongest in R&B. Although Stronger with Each Tear may not be one of her greatest works, it ensures that Blige remains as relevant as any of her more recent contemporaries." In a mixed review, Jon Pareles from The New York Times wrote that Blige's "chosen producers are masters of what might be called algorithm-and-blues: crisply digitized grids of beats and hooks [...] The arrangements are often supremely clever, but the songs can also be busy and bloodless, and they’re built for adequate voices, not commanding ones. Often they tend to treat vocals as one more neatly placed sound effect." Mikael Wood from Spin magazine wrote: "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 [...] 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.

Accolades

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

Notes Sample credits

Personnel

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Release history

Original release

Reissue release