Songoftheday 1/9/22 - When the train rolls by, I'm gonna be ready this time...
"Ready To Run" - Dixie Chicks
from the albums Runaway Bride (Original Soundtrack) and Fly (both 1999)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #39 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 3
Today's song comes from the (Dixie) Chicks, whose major-label debut Wide Open Spaces sold millions of copies and spun off five top ten country radio hits, with two of them, "There's Your Trouble" and "You Were Mine", crossing over to the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 pop chart. In 1999, the trio of sisters Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Strayer returned with a song for the Julia Roberts/Richard Gere movie Runaway Bride. Just like Martina McBride's song from the film "I Love You", the Chicks' "Ready To Run" also served as the lead single from their next studio release Fly. Written by Maguire with Marcus Hummon, and produced by Paul Worley and Blake Chancey, the midtempo song is a fun little fiddle-inflected nugget about being flighty, perfect about the movie about a woman to left three men at the altar. The fiddle, pennywhistle, and sublime harmonies in the record do all the heavy lifting here. In the music video, the trio leaves their men at the altar, going on a jaunt through the neighborhood that's infinitely better than McBride's milquetoast effort (which is damn surprising)...
"Ready To Run" became the Chicks' third top-40 crossover hit in October of 1999. The song spent a week at #2 on Billboard's Country Singles chart as well. Internationally, the single was a minor hit in the UK at #53, and rose to #3 on the Canadian Country chart. The Fly album, released in August of that year, took two weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, as well as topping the Country Albums list, going on to sell over ten million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2000, "Ready To Run" won the award for Best Duo/Group Country Vocal Performance, and was nominated for Best Country Song, losing out to Shania Twain and Mutt Lange for Twain's "Come On Over". The Fly album won for Best Country Album, and was up for Album of the Year, which Santana took home for their Supernatural comeback. The Chicks and both the soundtrack and Fly will be back to the series.
(7/10)
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Next up, on their Sessions At West 54th St for public television in 1999...
The trio sang "Ready To Run" at the Country Music Awards that same year...
and lastly, on their DCX MMXVI World tour in 2016...
Up tomorrow: An R&B superstar sure wishes this song title would come true. We don't.
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