Robbed hit of the week 8/16/21 - Alan Jackson's "Right On The Money"...

 

 

"Right On The Money" - Alan Jackson 

from the album High Mileage (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #43

This week's "robbed hit" comes from country music legend Alan Jackson, who had been in this series before with his song "Chatahoochee", which had topped the country radio chart and just missed the pop Hot 100 top-40 in 1993. A year later, Alan's next album, Who I Am scored three consecutive #1 country singles with his remake of the 60s rocker "Summertime Blues" along with the romantic "Livin' On Love" and the comedic take on the genre "Gone Country". The album was his first to make the top ten on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #5. That was followed by his first Greatest Hits Collection, which also spawned a pair of #1 country hits in his version of the George Jones/Roger Miller song "Tall Tall Trees" as well as his own gentle ballad "I'll Try". In 1996, Jackson released his fifth studio album Everything I Love. That record placed six of its songs on to the Country Airplay top-20, including two more chart toppers with "There Goes" and the zydeco homage "Little Bitty", with the latter, released as a "cassingle", returning Alan to the pop Hot 100 chart at #58. Although the album missed the Billboard 200 top ten at #12, it sold over three million and was his fourth consective #1 Country Album (including the hits set). 

Despite Jackson's huge string of success, his personal life was in shambles by 1998. Separated from his wife partly due to his infidelity, Alan's music took a turn on his next album High Mileage. With publicity surrounding the separation surprising the Nashville fan community who always had him pegged as a straight-laced happy guy, the singer returned with the stark mostly spoken-word single "I'll Go On Loving You" as a lead off track. The song still made it up to #3 on Billboard magazine's Country Airplay chart, but in a place where he was expected to hit the top on every first try, it was a daring and rewarding (for his artistic vision) move. The second release from the record, though, lightened things up a bit (perhaps foreboding the couple's reunion) with "Right On The Money". Written by Charlie Black and Phil Vassar (the latter who will have his own top-40 success), the song harkens back to new love, and how the girl is everything he dreams of. It's a predictor of the "list" songs that have infected most of modern country today, but Alan's easy-going delivery and ability to put nuance into the song to a softer shuffling swing beat made the medicine go down easier...

While "Right On The Money" brought Jackson back to the top of the Country Airplay chart for a sixteenth time, even though Billboard changed their rules to allow airplay-only album cuts to make the Hot 100, it stalled right under the top-40 in January of 1999. The song also topped the Canadian country chart as well. The High Mileage album, released in September of 1998, scored a fifth consecutive #1 Country Album, and returned Alan to the Billboard 200 top ten at #4, going on to sell over a million copies. Eventually, Alan will make the top-40 from this album, but not before another "robbed hit" first.

(7/10)