Cooleyhighharmony

Cooleyhighharmony is the debut studio album by Boyz II Men, released in June 1991 on Motown Records and produced by Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Dallas Austin, and Babyface. It is the album that introduced the Philadelphia vocal harmony quartet and established the New Jack Swing-influenced R&B ballad as a dominant commercial form of the early 1990s. The group performed all vocals; professional songwriters provided most material, with Babyface contributing the defining ballads and Dallas Austin contributing the more uptempo tracks. 'Motownphilly,' 'It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,' and 'Please Don't Go' were the principal singles; 'It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday' reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and demonstrated the group's commercial viability as a ballad act. Cooleyhighharmony has been certified nine-times platinum in the United States and reached number three on the Billboard 200; it established Boyz II Men as the most commercially significant vocal harmony act of the decade and set the template for the smooth R&B ballad format that would dominate the commercial charts through 1995. The album's impact on American R&B production was considerable: the Babyface-powered ballad format it demonstrated became the template for smooth R&B for the entire first half of the 1990s, and virtually every major vocal harmony group of the decade built their commercial approach on the foundation Cooleyhighharmony established.