Songoftheday 3/24/22 - Yeah I was always the crazy one broke into the stadium, and I wrote your number on the 50 yard line...

 

 

"How Do You Like Me Now?!" - Toby Keith

from the album How Do You Like Me Now?! (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's song comes from Toby Keith (Covel), who grew up in Oklahoma, where he worked in the oil drilling business as well as a semi-semi-pro football player (coincidentally in that sham of a league called the USFL that Mango Mussolini was involved in) while he was trying to gain momentum with a music career with a band called Easy Money. Eventually Toby moved to Nashville, and was signed to Mercury Nashville in the early 1990s. There he recorded his self-titled debut album which came out in 1993. The lead single from the set, "Should've Been A Cowboy", made him a star instantly, going all the way to #1 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart on his first try, as well as popping on to the "pop" Hot 100 chart at #93. Including that one, four of the album's cuts reached the top 5 of the country chart, and the album spent over a year on the Billboard 200 sales chart, and #17 on the Country Albums list, selling over a million copies.

Switching over to sister label Polydor, Keith returned with his sophomore effort Boomtown the following year. The first single, "Who's That Man", returned him to #1 on the country chart, while the album reached the top ten on the Country Albums chart at #8 while peaking at #46 on the Billboard 200, also selling over a million. However after a Christmas release, Polydor was shutting down, and moving to A&M's country division Toby released his fourth studio disc, Blue Moon, in 1996. Although it also sold a million copies and of its three top ten hits the third, "Me Too", nabbed his third #1, A&M had already shuttled their Nashville division, putting Keith right back with Mercury. His next album, Dream Walkin', came out in 1997, with lead release "We Were In Love" spending two weeks at #2 on the country chart. That was followed by the unusual pairing of him with British new wave rocker Sting on a remake of the latter's 1997 single "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying", which got a good reception, taking a week at #2 on the country chart and making it to the pop Hot 100 at #84 (ten rungs higher than Sting's original). Their version ended up getting nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, losing to Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood for their "In Another's Eyes". But disputes on a follow-up album with the label, who released a Greatest Hits Volume One collection, had Keith parting ways with Mercury. 

Toby signed on with the fledgling DreamWorks label, headed by the producer of his last album, James Stroud. Things got off to a rocky start when the first single "When Love Fades" stalled under the top-40 of the country chart at #44 in the fall of 1999. But that was quickly corrected when the singer/songwriter changed gears and rush-released his next offering, the album's title track "How Do You Like Me Now?!", one of the songs that Mercury passed on. Written by Keith with frequent collaborator Chuck Cannon and produced by Stroud and Toby, the song is a big brash kiss-off to a high school crush that wouldn't give him the time of day. Now that he's a big star, she apparently married for the money and he's (theoretically) rubbing it in her face, to the point of being the first thing she hears in the morning on the clock radio. It was quite a different song for a guy to release, especially in the country genre, and it caught on like wildfire, becoming Toby's true breakthrough moment. He gets to relive his football days in the video, as even the opening lines reveal that he wasn't quite an angel himself. The only thing that makes this a very slightly less-than-perfect record is the kids-chant mocking instrumental nyah-nyah denouement...

"How Do You Like Me Now?!" (he needed both punctuation marks) became Toby's first top-40 crossover hit on the Hot 100 in April of 2000. The song was massive on country radio, spending five weeks at #1 on Billboard's Country Singles chart. Internationally, the single rose to #8 on the Canadian Country list. The How Do You Like Me Now?! album, released in November of 1999, made it to #56 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, but stayed on the list for a hefty 92 weeks, while getting to #9 on the Country Albums chart, going on to sell over a million copies. Both Toby and the album will be back to the series. 

(9/10)

Up tomorrow: Well, wouldn't you know it, Toby's sworn nemeses. I wouldn't mess with them.