Vanessa Williams has put a fresh backstory on one of her signature songs, saying Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand both passed on “Save the Best for Last” before she recorded it. Williams said she was the third artist offered the track, and the song later became her first and only No. 1 on the Hot 100.
She made the comments on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast, which is why the song is back in the conversation now. Williams said, “They gave it to Bette Midler, who passed. They gave it to Streisand, and she passed. And I was, like, third one up.” That detail turns a familiar hit into a small pop-music lesson: the song that would define her chart peak almost ended up somewhere else.
The timing of the story matters because “Save the Best for Last” was not just another album cut. Williams chose it for The Comfort Zone, her second studio album, released in 1991, and it went out as the third single. By 1992, it had spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, finished the year at No. 4, and earned two Grammy nominations, including record of the year. For Williams, it became the benchmark that followed her everywhere: her highest-charting Hot 100 song and the only one to reach the top.
That is what gives the rejection trail its bite. Midler passed, then Streisand passed, and the third offer landed with Williams, who said the song went to her after the earlier chances were turned away. She also said she would have loved to record Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby,” but that it never reached her because of an apparent oversight. In other words, the path to a hit can hinge less on fate than on who hears the song, who does not, and who is in line when the call finally gets made.
Williams has long had more than one lane. She followed “Save the Best for Last” with additional Hot 100 hits such as “The Comfort Zone,” “Colors of the Wind,” “The Sweetest Days” and “Love Is,” while also building an acting career in Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty and Shaft. But the new detail reinforces the same point her chart history already made: the song that became her defining hit was not the first choice for the people who heard it before her. It was the third, and in this case third was enough.
