Songoftheday 9/8/21 - I can't find a reason to let go, even though you've found a new love and she's what your dreams are made of...

 

 

"You Were Mine" - Dixie Chicks

from the album Wide Open Spaces (1997)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song is from the (Dixie) Chicks, who had scored their first #1 Country Singles hit with a song that also made the "pop" Hot 100 top-40, "There's Your Trouble", in the summer of 1998.  Their follow-up, "Wide Open Spaces", ended up being their biggest country radio hit, spending four weeks at #1, but just missed the Hot 100 top-40 at the frustrating peak of #41. The trio's fourth offering from their debut album was the heartbreak ballad "You Were Mine". Written by bandmate sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire and produced by Paul Worley and Blake Chancey, the song was inspired by their parents' separation and divorce. And in life mirroring art, the sisters used singer Natalie Maines to sing on the record company demo, soon breaking up themselves with previous lead singer Laura Lynch in the process. Natalie's father Lloyd played steel guitar on the track, and it signaled a real depth in their music from the upbeat country songs to this sweet harmony of a dirge for a love gone by. Maines' voice is perfect in capturing the sadness and resignation of the situation of her man leaving for another, cresting with this utterly heartbreaking bridge...

I can give you two good reasons
To show you love's not blind
He's two and she's four, and you know they adore you
So how can I tell them you've changed your mind?

"You Were Mine" became the Chicks' second top-40 hit on the Hot 100 in March of 1999. The song landed the trio their third #1 country radio hit, staying at the top for two weeks. Internationally, the single also topped the Canadian country chart. 

 

A fifth single from Wide Open Spaces, the traditional Western swing of "Tonight The Heartache's On Me", made it into the top ten on Billboard's Country Singles chart at #6 (as did the Chicks' debut single "I Can Love You Better" at #7), and stopped just short of the Hot 100 top-40 at #46.  Lastly, the feisty retro-rock number "Let 'Er Rip" got enough country radio love to spend over three months on the Country Singles list in the summer of 1999, peaking at #64. The Chicks will return to this series.

(10/10)

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Here's the trio in concert in London in 1999...

Natalie, Emily, and Martie performed "You Were Mine" at the 1999 ACM country music awards...

and finally, playing with Sheryl Crow at a televised show in New York City that same year...

Up tomorrow: Smooth R&B group questions romance.