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"I Shall Be There" was the sixth single to be released by Irish girl group B*witched and the second from their second album Awake and Breathe. The second single was originally intended to be "Are You A Ghost?" hence why it appears on the sticker on the album cover, but it was not as commercial as some of their other tracks on the album, and I Shall Be There was ultimately chosen instead. This song resulted from a quirky blend of musical and ethnic styles from two groups - African choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Irish girl group B*Witched. B*Witched's lead vocalist, Edele Lynch explained the pairing:
- "We met them backstage at the BRIT Awards in 1999, and me and Keavy had been listening to a lot of their stuff, so we asked if they wanted to work with us, and when we came together in the studio it just all kind of fell into place and made for a really interesting experience."
Video: The video had a very 'African' feel to it and featured two different scenes, a jungle scene which was very colorful and exotic looking. The girls sported more exotic looking outfits for this scene, and an 'savanna' theme which was more darker and had the girls dressed in more conservative and earthy-toned colored outfits. Both scenes featured computer generated animals made to look like they were right there with the girls. The video showed a much more mature look than previous ones and also saw the girls changing their looks once again. For example, Keavy had an even shorter haircut than she did in Jesse Hold On and Lindsay alternated between her trademark curly hair (in the savanna scenes) and long straightened hair in the jungle scenes. This 'straightened' hairstyle would follow her for the rest of B*witched.
Chart Performance: I Shall Be There was released on December 6th 1999 and unfortunately became the first single from them to miss the top 10 completely reaching only #13, it spent a total of 9 weeks on the chart, 5 of which were in the top 40. Many say the reason for it missing the top 10 was due to the lack of promotion it got because the girls were on tour and unable to promote it outside of their tour.
