Robbed hit of the week 7/26/21 - Lee Ann Womack's "A Little Past Little Rock"...

 

 

"A Little Past Little Rock" - Lee Ann Womack

from the album Some Things I Know (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #43 (one week)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from country singer Lee Ann Womack, who grew up in the East Texan city of Jacksonville, the daughter of a radio DJ who helped shape her love for music at a young age. Nevertheless, Womack didn't start her music career until she was in her thirties, signing with the Decca imprint of MCA Records, where she had been working behind the scenes. Lee Ann's self-titled debut album was released in 1997, with the first single "Never Again, Again" hitting a modest #23 on the Country Songs chart in Billboard magazine, but the retail single sold well enough that it "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 list at #124. That set-up paid off as her next two single from her debut, "The Fool" and "You Got To Talk To Me", both raced to #2 on the Country Songs chart. The pair of songs showed how adept Lee Ann is with both traditional country and more crossover-friendly material. The album came in at #109 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, and #9 on the Country Albums list, and eventually sold over a million copies.

Womack returned in 1998 with her sophomore effort, Some Things I Know. The lead single, "A Little Past Little Rock", was written by the team of Jess Brown, Brett Jones, and Tony Lane, with Mark Wright producing the track. A "travelling road" song (a favorite genre of mine), Lee Ann sings of a relationship she's leaving behind. Although she's escaping the physical reminders of that loss, she admits her heart isn't totally over him. Making it more poignant is that ex-husband Jason Sellers is singing backup (I guess for the sake of their child they're amicable). The result is a beautiful yet heart-tugging piece that tells a vivid story, something women in country have been so good with and today's country has been lacking sorely...

"A Little Past Little Rock" truly was a "robbed hit", as it wasn't initially able to place on Billboard's pop Hot 100 chart since it wasn't released as a retail single. When the music industry trade bible finally changed that rule in December of 1998, the song had just finished peaking on the radio, and came in right under the top-40. Had that been a couple weeks earlier, the song would've been in there and been on my "Song of the Day" series. (She'll be on there soon, though.) The song spent three weeks at #2 on the Country Songs radio chart. The Some Things I Know album, released in September of that year, got to #136 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #20 on the Country Albums list, going on to move over a half million copies. 

(10/10)

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Here's Lee Ann performing the song on cable TV in 1998...

Next up, on an awards show that same year....

 

 Fast forward to 2018, at a concert in Atlanta...

A year later, duo Maddie & Tae covered the song for a video that's amassed over a million views...

Lastly, Womack performing "A Little Past Little Rock" acoustically for a radio gig in 2015...