Songoftheday 11/3/21 - I hear you've been askin' about me from some of my friends, well you'd better believe I'm not goin' through that again...

 

 

"Lesson In Leavin'" - Jo Dee Messina

from the album I'm Alright (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from country singer Jo Dee Messina, who landed her first top-40 crossover hit in the beginning of 1999 with the third single from her sophomore album I'm Alright, "Stand Beside Me".  The fourth release from the record was a cover of a song made popular by Dottie West. "Lesson In Leavin'", written by Randy Goodrum and Brent Maher, spent a week at #1 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart in 1980, and crossed over to make it to #73 on their Hot 100 tally. It was West's first country #1 after a career starting in 1963...

 

 

 

While Dottie's record was pretty much in the pop-inflected "cosmopolitan country" at the time, Messina and producers Byron Gallimore and Tim McGraw actually bring it back to a more traditional country reading with the steel guitar augmenting the electric ones, though the harmonies on the chorus remain the strongest thing about the record in its sing-a-long quality. Jo Dee sends off an ex who is trying to rekindle the flame, and wishing for karma to come back around to them, something well-read in the genre (hell, any genre at the time)...

"Lesson In Leavin'" became Messina's second top-40 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in August of 1999. The song spent seven weeks at #2 on their Country Singles chart as well. Internationally, the single also climbed to #2 on the Canadian Country chart.

A fifth single from the I'm Alright album, the ballad "Because You Love Me", climbed to #8 on the Country Singles chart, and peaked at #53 on the crossover Hot 100. Messina will be back to the series. 

(8/10)

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Here's Jo Dee performing "Lesson' In Leavin'" live at the CMA Awards in 1999...

 

 And lastly, an in-studio stripped-down version of the song in 2015...

Up tomorrow: Modern rock band is cautiously optimistic.