Songoftheday 8/7/21 - I can't sleep at all I'm making late night calls, just to talk to you and hear your voice again
"You're Beginning To Get To Me" - Clay Walker
from the album Greatest Hits (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #39 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1
Today's song comes from country music singer Clay Walker, who grew up in eastern Texas and played locally before being discovered and signed to Giant Records. The president of the label, James Stroud, produced Walker's self-titled debut album, and his first single, "What's It To You", climbed all the way to the top of Billboard magazine's Country Songs chart in 1993, and sold enough cassingles to make it to #73 on the all-genre "pop" Hot 100. That was followed by "Live Until I Die", which Clay wrote himself, that also reached the top of the country radio list. The fourth single from the set, "Dreaming With My Eyes Open", scored a hat trick of #1's off the debut. The Clay Walker album went to #52 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #8 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies.
The next year, Walker returned with his sophomore effort, If I Could Make A Living, which also scored a pair of #1 country hits with "If I Could Make A Living" and "This Woman and This Man". A third album in 1995, Hypnotize The Moon, continued his streak of top ten country albums, and while it didn't have any charttopping singles, two of the tracks hit #2 on the list including "Hypnotize The Moon", which also "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 at #105. In 1996, Walker was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but had been able to control it with diet and medication. Clay's fourth release Rumor Has It in 1997 saw him returning to #1 on the country songs list for a sixth and so far final time with "Rumor Has It". Also from the record was the tropical-tinged "Then What", which peaked at #2 at country and brought Walker back to the Hot 100 at #65.
After these fourth popular albums and fifth top-40 country hits, Giant released Walker's first compilation, Greatest Hits. Containing a dozen of his biggest, the record included two new tracks. The first, "Ordinary People", was a minor country radio hit, stopping at #35 on Billboard's Country Songs chart, and "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #120. The second song, though, would get a much better reception. "You're Beginning To Get To Me", written by Tom Shapiro and Aaron Barker, was again produced by Stroud. A midtempo easygoing love song that is trying to slyly underplay it as a love song, the record forgoes puns for a more change in phrasing in the title, as Clay sings how his woman is affecting him more and more and how it might be if he's gone. It's super cute, though not as immediate as some of his earlier big hits. His twangy yet clear as a bell voice is in fine form, and the record brought him back to the upper reaches of the country chart, and it benefited from Billboard changing its rules to allow album tracks on the Hot 100 on radio play alone...
"You're Beginning To Get To Me" became Walker's first top-40 pop hit in December of 1998. The song spent a week on Billboard's Country Songs chart. Internationally, the single went to #7 on the Canadian Country list. The Greatest Hits album, released in June of 1998, was Clay's fifth consecutive top ten Country Album at #9, while climbing to #41 on the Billboard 200, going on to move over a half-million copies. Clay will be back to the series.
(6/10)
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Up tomorrow: Another country singer finds Armageddon in his biggest hit.
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