Robbed hit of the week 10/11/21 - Sawyer Brown's "Drive Me Wild"...

 

 

"Drive Me Wild" - Sawyer Brown

from the album Drive Me Wild (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44 

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from Sawyer Brown, who got their start as the touring band for singer Don King, who had a string of moderate-to-minor country radio hits in the late 1970s/early 1980's, the biggest being "I've Got You (To Come Home To)", which went to #16 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart in 1977.  Dubbing themselves Sawyer Brown, the group, led by lead singer/guitarist Mark Miller, appeared on the talent show Star Search (yes, the one SOTD singers Sam Harris, Shanice, Tracie Spencer, and LeAnn Rimes eventually were on), where they went on to win that series' season in 1983. Along with the cash prize, the band got signed to Capitol Records. There they released their self-titled debut album, which went to #140 on the Billboard 200 (no doubt helped by the exposure from the show), and #2 on Billboard's Country Albums list. Their first single "Leona", which sounded like a copy of the band Alabama, was a modest success at #16 on the Country Singles chart. It would be their second release, though, that would put the band on the map on Nashville radio when "Step By Step", which had a more distinct shuffling cadence, climbed all the way to #1 in 1985. The rest of the decade had Sawyer Brown accrue a string of charting singles, with four of the them reaching the top ten, with "This Missin' You Heart Of Mine" spending a week in the runner-up spot in 1988. 

 

After a cooling off with radio at the beginning of the 1990s, the band rebounded in 1991 with "The Walk", which brought them back into the top ten on the Country Singles chart at #2 and started a eight-song streak of consecutive top ten hits. Appearing on their album The Dirt Road, which climbed to #68 on the Billboard 200 sales chart and moved over a half million copies, the song marked a change in tone for their music giving much more variety than just an uptempo squeaky-clean party band. They didn't forget their roots, though, and the record's third single, "Some Girls Do", scored their second #1 Country Singles hit in 1992. Moving to Curb Records, they continued to vacillate between the slow and fast numbers to great success, with the somber "All These Years"  (my personal favorite of theirs) crossing over to Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") pop radio chart at #42 while going to #3 on the Country Singles list in 1993. That same year, the band landed a third #1 country radio hit with the upbeat line dance-friendly "Thank God For You", which also "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #117. Two years later Sawyer Brown released their second retrospective Greatest Hits 1990-1995, which was their highest-charting album on the Billboard 200 at #44. 

In 1998, Sawyer Brown released their thirteenth studio album Drive Me Wild. The title song was released as the lead single from the record. Written by Miller and band keyboardist Gregg Hubbard along with Mike Lawler, the song was in their lite-party wheelhouse, but all traces of "traditional country" was eschewed for a rock pastiche with retro overtones as Miller sings about letting his woman be in control no matter what. I don't quite understand Miller's Michael Stipe of R.E.M. impression in the music video, but it got enough of an audience and at the right time (when Billboard changed their rules on airplay and sales on the chart) to bring the band their biggest crossover hit...

While "Drive Me Wild" put Sawyer Brown into the Country Singles chart top ten for the nineteenth and so far final time at #6, it stalled right under the pop Hot 100 top-40 in May of 1999, still claiming their only hit on that list. Internationally, the single went all the way to the top of the Canadian Country Singles chart. The Drive Me Wild album, released in March of that year, went to #99 on the Billboard 200 sales tally (their most recent appearance there), and #10 on the Country Albums list.

The second single from the album, the simplistic breakup ballad "I'm In Love With Her", stopped down at #47 on the Country Singles chart. That was followed by the religious parable "800 Pound Jesus", which did slightly better by at least making it into the top-40 at #40. 

The Nashville habit of cycling out popular acts with each decade took hold of Sawyer Brown in the 2000s, with the band having only one more top-40 hit on the country singles chart in 2005 with "They Don't Understand". That song was from their album Mission Temple Fireworks Stand, which was also their last charting set on the Country Albums list at #47. After that, they left Curb to go indie, and have put out two more studio albums, the most recent being 2011's Travelin' Band. In 2015, Sawyer Brown released a one-off single, "We Got The Night". 

(4/10)

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Here's the band performing live at Farm Aid 2000, proving Mark Miller's frenetic dance wasn't a one-off...