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They’d seen “Schitt’s Creek” characters David and Patrick serenade each other with that song in two episodes. First, Patrick (Noah Reid) performs an acoustic cover of the hit, using it to publicly declare his love for David (Dan Levy). Later, David dramatically lip syncs the Turner version for Patrick.
“I remember when we [saw] it,” Halstead said, of Reid’s performance, “it was like ‘Oh my God.’ The most heartwarming, heart-stopping, heart-pounding scene I’d seen in a while. It encapsulated a relationship where one person is a little more hesitant and reserved, and the other person is fully fearless and is going to go all in and show it publicly. We knew from that episode that we wanted it involved [in the wedding] in some way.”
In October, when the Halsteads got married, two of their best friends sang Reid’s version of the “The Best” during the ceremony. Then a DJ played the Turner version as they entered the wedding reception.
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“It’s just such a triumphant love song,” Halstead said.
More than 30 years after the song was written, “The Best” has become a soundtrack for love — and weddings — because of “Schitt’s Creek,” which wraps up six seasons with a series finale on Tuesday. If you search Twitter for the phrases “first dance” and “Simply the Best,” you’ll see that fans have been choosing it for their weddings since Reid performed it on the Season 4 episode “Open Mic,” which first aired on Pop TV in 2018. More people found the song when that season dropped on Netflix late that year.
A Spotify rep confirmed that between 2018 and 2019, the music streaming service saw a “more than 170 percent increase” in additions of Reid’s cover to first dance and wedding playlists.
People are also using the song for pandemic comfort listening right now. One fan tweeted at Levy last week, “Binge watching Schitt’s Creek for the first time during quarantine. . . . you are everything! Will watch you lip sync Simply the Best daily. You and Tina [Turner] will get us through this."
Binge watching Schitt’s Creek for the first time during quarantine. @danjlevy you are everything! Will watch you lip sync Simply the Best daily. You and Tina will get us through this.
— Nicole (@UAHnikki) March 29, 2020
“Schitt’s Creek” star Reid, who’s also a touring musician, said in a phone interview that he’s noticed the many people who tweet at him asking him to sing the song at their weddings or to mark their love. Sometimes the requests are very specific; people will ask him to record a new version of the song with their significant other’s name in it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have time for that, but he’s honored that people love his version so much. Reid also said he can’t take full credit for his rendition.
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Also @olreid, how can my fiancée and I convince you to play Simply the Best for the first dance at our wedding on June 6th in Burlington? We don't have a lot of overlapping musical taste, but is one of the few songs that has floored us both. @danjlevy
— Dave Whiteside (@🏡) (@dave__whiteside) January 24, 2020
It was Dan Levy, Reid said, who wrote “The Best” into the “Schitt’s Creek” script.
“I went to the table read,” Reid said, "and I had just read the script where it says Patrick gets up and records — I can’t remember the exact word — a gentle acoustic cover of Tina Turner’s ‘The Best’ . . . and it’s surprisingly good.” No pressure.
Reid asked Levy if he could try to come up with his own arrangement.
“I think I sent him an iPhone memo some weeks later, and I didn’t hear back from him for a while. When I didn’t hear from him for several hours, I was like, I guess that’s not a good sign," Reid remembers. But it turns out, Levy loved it. Reid said one of the tricks to the song is that even with an acoustic cover, you can’t slow “The Best” down too much.
“It has to move,” he said.
Reid happens to be planning his own wedding, but “The Best” will not be his first-dance song.
“I don’t know that we have landed on it, but I think it would be tacky to pick my own tune. If I know my partner, she’ll be angling pretty hard for Shania Twain.”
Locally, though, “The Best” is a wedding favorite.
Josh Field, of E.C.F. Entertainment, which oversees event DJs and works with the Boston Common Band, had not known about the “Schitt’s Creek” cover, but he said it might explain the uptick in requests. In 22 years on the job, he said he’s only been asked for “The Best” a handful of times. But then, “last year, I had it personally requested three times. My business partner had it [requested] twice last year.”
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Apollo Payton, band leader and vocalist of Soul of Boston, did not know about the “Schitt’s Creek” cover until he was asked to play a slower, more acoustic version of it at a wedding last fall. Payton believes the tune, no matter the rendition, is timeless because of the lyrics.
“I call when I need you, my heart’s on fire,” Payton said, quoting the first line of the song. “You come to me, come to me, wild and wired."
“It just kind of speaks in the moment," Payton explained. "Who hasn’t experienced that feeling? They meet someone and they don’t feel like themselves. They feel energetic. They feel different.”
One person who was surprised to hear about “The Best” becoming a popular love song again was one of its co-writers. Holly Knight, who composed the hit with Mike Chapman, is also responsible for songs such as “Love Is a Battlefield” and Scandal’s “The Warrior.”
Knight, who lived in Boston for a few years in the 1970s and is now based on the West Coast, explained, humbly, that the song has long been a cash cow.
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“It is a huge income earner for me, which I wasn’t expecting when I wrote it.”
She gets paid when the song is licensed in various ways, and “The Best," more than any other tune she’s written gets licensed a lot. It’s been in campaigns for Celebration Cruises, HBO, and Toyota. It represents 80 percent of the value of her catalog. “Love is a Battlefield” trails at No. 2.
"Somehow it must have tapped into the jugular vein of the collective,” she said.
Until the interview for this story, Knight did not know how the song was used on “Schitt’s Creek," only that it was played on the show. She was interested to learn that it became the score for David and Patrick’s romance, and that to many, it’s now a ballad that celebrates queer love.
“This is news to me,” she said. “That’s wonderful.”
Knight said “(Simply) The Best” is one of a handful of songs she wrote with Chapman (another is “Better Be Good to Me,” also recorded by Turner). Asked what inspired the now-famous-again love song, Knight paused and said, “At the time, I was probably going through a divorce.”
She said she was probably inspired to write it because it was the kind of love she was looking for.
Column and comments are edited and reprinted from boston.com/loveletters. Send letters to meredith.goldstein@globe.com.
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