Background
In 2006, Monica's fifth studio album The Makings of Me was released. For the production of the album, the singer had re-teamed with most of her regular contributors and although the final tracklisting comprised an outweighing slower set of mid-tempo recording and ballads, J Records settled on "Everytime tha Beat Drop," a heavily snap-influenced up-tempo record which had initially been recorded for a So So Def mixtape, to lead the album — against the grain of the singer, who felt that the song did not speak to her core audience and was a poor representation of the album. Upon its release, The Makings of Me failed to reprise the multi-million sales success of previous albums, barley selling 325,000 copies in the United States, and while it produced four single releases, none of them managed to chart or sell noticeably, garnering Monica her least commercially successful project yet.
Still during the promotion of the album, the singer acknowledged that she had to follow a more honest approach on her next project: " just made me realize that people want authentic Monica," she stated. "They don't want me to keep up with all the different gimmicks and trends that are taking place." In late 2007, Monica started work on her follow-up album. Intending to create a record that lived up to the sound her previous hits, particularly those from the 1990s, she expressed that she wanted to appeal to her existing fans although her label was concerned with making the project sound up to date: "I am going back to where I started. The next album I would like people to get more songs like "Why I Love You So Much," "Angel of Mine," or the things they really, really love from me ." Originally entitled Lessons Learned—a reference to the mistakes Monica felt she made with The Makings of Me — the singer decided to change the project after recording the album's title track in 2008 as she felt that Still Standing was more appropriate for the body of work that she and Bryan-Michael Cox pulled off.
Read more about this topic: Still Standing (Monica Album)
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