Bill Anderson – But You Know I Love You
The first in a quartet of celebratory songs to bring in the New Year, this song has the odd distinction of being the co-title track of Anderson’s 1969 album; it had two titles, the other being album opener My Life. That song was a number one, while this one was a number two.
It was actually a cover of a Hot 100 top 20 song from the same year by Kenny Rogers and his band First Edition. Dolly Parton turned it into a troubadour’s ballad and topped the country charts in 1981, and just short of the top 40 on the pop side, as part of an album called 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs, a companion piece to the soundtrack movie.
Written by Mike Settle, who played guitar for First Edition, it’s the type of song Glen Campbell, or perhaps Elvis, would have sung about being on the road and missing his baby as ‘the morning sun streaks across my room…the dollar signs are keeping us apart’. Yet he must be out on ‘this travelling life’ and lament his ‘chain of broken dreams’.
Unlike For Loving You, the piece of dreck that we discussed in the Any Given Songday series which did get to the top of the country charts, this has a melody and some excitement, with a kinetic pedal steel part underneath the road warrior/worrier’s tale. In the middle section, Anderson realises ‘the answers could be found in children’s nursery rhymes, I’d come running back to you’.
He sings ‘I love you’ 15 times, mostly answered by stabs of Mariachi trumpets; if the track hadn’t faded out, he might still be confessing his love half a century later.
Travis Tritt – It’s a Great Day to Be Alive
Tritt is doomed to be best known for a song he didn’t write and which did not top the country charts, held at bay by Who I Am by Jessica Andrews. Tritt cut it for his 2000 album Down the Road I Go after Jon Randall had recorded it for an album that was not released until the 2020s.
It is one of those country songs where a boy is thankful for the little he’s got, a campfire singalong which I reckon Ketch Secor used as a base on which to build Wagon Wheel. In writer Darrell Scott’s case, he had just been bedridden after an accident so had gratitude on his mind.
It may be ‘goofy’ but he’s happy to sing away, with a soaring melody attaching itself to the title and ‘the sun still shining’ in the face of ‘hard times’. His joy is natural, ‘neither drink- nor drug-induced’, and the G-major key is a perfect setting for the lyric.
We open with images of ‘rice cooking in the microwave’ and ‘homemade soup’, and ‘a three-day beard I don’t plan to shave’; in the final verse, the narrator meditates on growing ‘a Fu Manchu’ moustache before a syncopated final few iterations of the chorus interrupt his reverie and bring him back to his main theme.
Scott’s lyric, which Tritt copies with a superlative reading, has a proper middle eight with some concessions to reality: ‘sometimes it’s lonely, sometimes it’s only me and the shadows…howling at the moon’, which is rather appropriate for the ‘lone wolf’ he sees in the mirror. I believe that the singer would take his old motorbike ‘for a three-day cruise’. What a shame his politics make him a tough figure to like, although January 20 will be a great day for the Trump fan Tritt to be alive.
Josh Turner – Firecracker
The owner of one of country music’s most profound (as in deep) voices missed out on a number one with this in 2008; you can read about the song and the 18-year-old performer that held it off in a very recent Any Given Songday piece (clue: slamming screen door).
Written with Pat McLaughlin and Shawn Camp, who respectively wrote I Remember Everything for John Prine and Two Piña Coladas for Garth Brooks, this lead single from Turner’s third album is a quick-stepping country love song with a traditional bent, right from the basso profundo note that Turner hits before he begins his mostly two-chord, 12-bar declaration of love.
Our narrator is overwhelmed by his beloved, whom he compares to the title explosive where ‘sparks start a-flyin’ like the Fourth of July’ and ‘my heart starts a-poppin’. The song is written to the title: we get ‘a pack of Black Cats in a red paper wrapper’, ‘a dynamite stick’ and ‘a great big bang’, as well as ‘a blonde bottle rocket’ and ‘a heart attacker’.
An unheard C-sharp chord comes on the line ‘I’d sure hate to see it go up in smoke’, making it musically interesting as well as very, very danceable.
George Strait – Love’s Gonna Make It Alright
In 2024, George Strait toured stadiums with a young whippersnapper as an opening act. Before Chris Stapleton became a sort of Prince to Strait’s King, he co-wrote the second single (alongside Al Anderson) culled from Strait’s 2011 album Here for a Good Time. You can hear him harmonising the backing vocals in the chorus, making me wonder why it took so long for Stapleton to become a superlative singer/songwriter and eight-time (eight-time!) CMA Male Vocalist of the Year.
A 22-year-old Taylor Swift was at number one with Ours the very week that a man in his 60th year had the number two song in country music. It’s a mood piece where our narrator purrs some fidelity over three simple chords: ‘girl you’ve had one of those days’, ‘whatever bad luck is getting you down, honey I’ll be right here for you’, ‘we can dance your cares away’ and ‘I’ll chase you down the hallway’. It works very well next to Check Yes or No, as if George and Emmylou Hayes have grown up, or indeed when played next to anything by Josh Turner.
The middle section boasts the tongue-twisting triple negative ‘there ain’t nothin’ that lovin’ can’t get us through’, while the singalong chorus is the song’s title sung twice with ‘alright, alright…tonight, tonight’ added after each. Like Taylor’s Love Story, the final chorus goes up a key, here from E to F-sharp, with some boisterous fiddle emphasising just how alright love is gonna make it alright, alright; tonight, tonight.
A Country Way of Life 