Songoftheday 5/16/18 - You can tell the world you never was my girl, you can burn my clothes up when I'm gone...
from the album Some Gave All (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #4 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 22
Today's song of the days comes from country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who grew up in Kentucky the son of a blue-collar union man and Democratic politician. He left college to pursue music, and after roughing it and playing in bands, he landed a record deal with PolyGram, where he released his debut album Some Gave All in 1992. The first single from the record was a song originally turned down by the Oak Ridge Boys for being too hokey, and then showed up as an album cut from an obscure country act called the Marcy Brothers. The Brothers, who have one top-40 country hit to their name (1989's "Cotton Pickin' Time"), put the song as an album cut on their second and last effort in 1991 as "Don't Tell My Heart". Cyrus took a chance on the song, written by Don Von Tress, and helped by the burgeoning line-dancing craze emerging in country music, suddenly found a huge audience through the same-named line dance, and in no time helped by sales of the CD and cassette single, found its way on to the pop charts, and then to pop radio...
"Achy Breaky Heart" became Billy's first and by far biggest pop hit, reaching the top five in July of 1992. The song spent five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Country Airplay chart, and even climbed to #23 on their Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio tally. Internationally, the single was the first big country song in a generation to become popular worldwide; it spent seven weeks at #1 in Australia, as well as six weeks at the summit in New Zealand. The track peaked at #2 in Ireland, #3 in the UK, #4 in Canada, and #6 in Austria and Belgium (it almost hit the top ten in France at #11). The Some Gave All album, buoyed by the success of "Achy Breaky Heart", spent 17 week on top of Billboard's Albums Chart, the longest stay by a debut act.
The second single from the record, "Could've Been Me", took a week at #2 on the Country Airplay chart, but the straightforward country-rock song didn't get as much pop love; it peaked at #72 although it was his second and final hit on the Adult Contemporary radio format at #45. (It did reach the top-40 in the UK at #24 and the Netherlands at #29.) The third release, the ballad "She's Not Cryin' Anymore", which earned Billy his third top ten country hit at #6, as well as the pop Hot 100 at #70. That was followed by the hokey "Where'm I Gonna Live", which peaked at #23 on the country chart. Also, the title cut "Some Gave All" got enough airplay on country stations to place at #52 on that tally. His cover of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" wasn't released in America, but was a decent Top-40 hit in Continental Europe and reached #63 in the UK. After all was done, the Some Gave All set sold over 9 million records, one of the biggest debuts in history.
Cyrus quickly returned in 1993 with his sophomore effort, It Won't Be The Last. The title may be a jinx, as it ended up being his so-far last #1 country album. Lead single "In The Heart Of A Woman" spent a week at #3 on the country chart, while stopping at #76 on the pop Hot 100. Five years later, after a moderately successful but steady streak of singles on the country chart, Cyrus returned to the top ten with "Busy Man", which nearly reached the pop top-40 (#46). It would take until 2007 when Billy would reach the American pop Top-40 again with "Ready, Set, Don't Go", and that was with the help of his daughter Miley, who was just born when Some Gave All was topping the chart, but by then had all but overshadowed her father's fame.
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Here's the original version of "Achy Breaky Heart", released as "Don't Tell My Heart" by the Marcy Brothers...
And here's Billy Ray on stage in 1992...
Cyrus brought country to New York in 1992 as well....
And knocking them out at a musicwriters awards show in Nashville in '93...
He even got the "Weird Al" Yankovic treatment on the parody king's Alapalooza album in 1993...
Billy pulled it out again in 1994 for the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon...
...as well as for Farm Aid in 1997...
In 2014, rapper Buck 22 released a single meant to be a "sequel", "Achy Breaky 2", with Billy Ray in on the track and the video. It ended up at #80 on the pop Hot 100..
Finally a TV clip of Cyrus from this year, still going strong with the song...
Up tomorrow: Female trio doesn't want to show some emotions.
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