Songoftheday 7/30/21 - Two broken hearts lonely looking like houses where nobody lives, two people each having so much pride inside neither side forgives...

 

 

"Husbands and Wives" - Brooks & Dunn

from the album If You See Her (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #36 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

 

Today's song of the day comes from the duo Brooks & Dunn, who started out as separate solo artists in the 1980's. Kix Brooks scored a pair of minor country radio hits, the biggest being "Baby When Your Heart Breaks Down" at #87 in 1983, while Ronnie Dunn also had a pair of his own, with "It's Written All Over Your Face" making it to #59 that same year. Put together by Tim Dubois after they were signed by Arista Records, the pair released their debut album Brand New Man in the summer of 1991. The album broke a record by having their first four singles reach #1 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart; "Brand New Man", "My Next Broken Heart", "Neon Moon", and the line-dance anthem "Boot Scootin' Boogie", the latter a song they originally gave to the traditional country act Asleep At The Wheel. Three of those sported well-produced music videos, still a rather new thing in the genre, and it paid off; the album sold over six million copies, reached #10 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and "Boot Scootin' Boogie", released as a commercial single, sold enough to make the halfway mark on the all-genre "pop" Hot 100 chart in the summer of 1992. At the Grammy Awards the following year, the duo were nominated for Best Country Duo/Group Vocal Performance, which went to Emmylou Harris & The Nash Ramblers' At The Ryman live album (a poor choice that year, giving the award to the one act that's really a solo one for a live set out of four other bands including Alabama and Restless Heart). 

 

Brooks & Dunn returned in 1993 as well with their sophomore effort Hard Workin' Man. Five songs from that set made the country radio top ten (as did their debut), with the downtempo numbers "She Used To Be Mine" and "That Ain't No Way To Go" topping the list. "Hard Workin' Man", the lead single which hit #5, redeemed the pair by winning the Grammy in the category they lost the year prior. Also, "Rock My World (Little Country Girl)", which had Brooks on lead vocals for a change, popped on to the Hot 100 at #97.  They quickly dominated the Nashville music scene with their seamless fusion of rock music and country themes and instrumentation.

The duo's third set, Waitin' On Sundown, arrived in 1994, and landed another trio of #1 country hits with "She's Not The Cheatin' Kind", "Little Miss Honky Tonk", and the Brooks-sung "You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone", the latter nominated for the Country Duo/Group Grammy, losing out to the Mavericks' "Here Comes The Rain". Meanwhile, the album was their first to go to #1 on Billboard's Country Albums chart.

 

Kix & Ronnie followed with Borderline, which brought something different by offering a cover song as the lead single, a version of the 1970s pop hit "My Maria". That remake went to #1 on the Country Songs chart and placed at #79 on the Hot 100. A second song from the set, "A Man This Lonely", also hit #1 and "Bubbled Under" the Hot 100 at #124. "My Maria" won their second (and so far last) Grammy for Country Duo/Group Vocal, while the Borderline album itself scored their sole Best Country Album nomination, which went to eccentric singer Lyle Lovett's Road To Ensenada (which now would be a purely "Americana" record). The set did land a second #1 Country Album in Billboard. In 1997, the duo put out their first Greatest Hits album, which even produced a pair of new top ten country hits.

By the time of the release of Brooks & Dunn's fifth album, they had amassed a lucky 21 top ten country hit singles, their entire chart career to that point save one that went to #13 and a non-promoted soundtrack cut. They were at the top of their game, and to bring it to another level they teamed up with one of the biggest women in the genre, Reba McEntire, for the event record duet "If You See Him/If You See Her", which appeared and half-titled both of the act's new albums. The song spent two weeks at #1 on the Country Singles chart, and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, losing to the too-many-artist-to-mention version of "Same Ol' Train" from a compilation that probably won from the votes of all the singers on the record alone. That was followed by "How Long Gone", which also went to the top for three weeks.  

 

The third offering from If You See Her was another cover song, this time of a country classic from even further back. "Husbands and Wives" was originally released by the song's author, Roger Miller, in 1966. The single, dealing with the pain and pride in the dissolution of a marriage, made the top ten on Billboard's Country and Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") charts, while hitting the top-40 on the Hot 100 at #26...

Brooks & Dunn's version stay faithful to the original, with Dunn's world-weary vocal delivery matching Miller's for the most part except for some Mariah-like flourishes. It brought the song to a totally new audience, and didn't try to make it into something completely different in doing so, letting the words just set the stage, even with its dearth of lyrics (it's just repeating the first verse twice)

Since "Husbands and Wives" was hitting the top of the country radio chart just as Billboard changed their rules to allow album cuts appear on the Hot 100, the song became their first to make the top-40 level of the list in December of 1998. The song spent a week at #1 on the Country Singles chart as well. The If You See Her album, released in June of that year, went to #4 on the Country Albums list, while just missing the top ten on the Billboard 200 all-genre sales tally at #11, going on to sell over two million copies nonetheless. 

The fourth release from If You See Him, "I Can't Get Over You", peaked at #5 on the Country Singles chart, and stopped right under the halfway mark on the Hot 100 at #51. They tried for a fifth single, "South Of Santa Fe", which was a rare misfire, stopping at the dreaded #41 on the Country Singles radio list, despite a big-budget video. But the pair will be back to the series.

(7/10)

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Besides Miller and Brooks & Dunn, country singers David Frizzell and Shelly West had a hit with "Husbands and Wives" as a male/female duet in 1981, reaching #16 on the Country Singles chart...

Brooks & Dunn performed "Husbands and Wives" at the CMA Awards in 1998...

and lastly, live in concert....

Up tomorrow: We head down south with this Philly rapper.