Songoftheday 3/27/22 - We loaded up my old station wagon, with a tent Coleman sleeping bags...

 

 

"The Best Day" - George Strait

from the album Latest Greatest Straitest Hits (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 8

 

Today's song comes from country music icon George Strait, whose nineteenth (!) studio album Always Never The Same had finally landed the singer his first two top-40 crossover hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with "Meanwhile" and "Write This Down". Even though they weren't his "biggest" hits going back to the start of his long career that began in the 1980's, Billboard magazine's rule change allowing album cuts to reach the chart on radio airplay meant a lot more representation from big country radio hits.

 

Going into the new millennium, George released another hits collection, Latest Greatest Straitest Hits, his fifth compilation including a four-disc box set from 1995 that made the top quarter of the Billboard 200 sales chart and sold millions. This new set had classic from the 1990s, along with two new recordings. One of them, "The Best Day", was promoted to radio as his new single. Written by Carson Chamberlain and Dean Dillon, and produced by Tony Brown, the song tells the story from the eyes of a father whose son grows up and has three "best days", from just going camping to his first car to his wedding day. Like the best of country music, the strength is it the lyrics and George's talent in conveying the parable to his audience, and the writers in using scenes a lot of people can relate to (even if they didn't live it themselves). The result was another big hit bringing him Strait back to the top-40...

"The Best Day" became George's third top-40 crossover hit on the Hot 100 in April of 2000. The song spent three weeks at #1 on Billboard's Country Singles chart as well. Internationally, the single rose to #7 on the Canadian Country chart. The Latest Greatest Straitest Hits album, released in March of that year, took a week at #2 on the Billboard 200, and topped the Country Albums list for two weeks, going on to sell over two million copies.

The second new song on the collection was "Murder On Music Row", a song about the rise of "country-pop" in Nashville at the expense of the traditional side of the genre. Written by Larry Cordle and Larry Shell for the former's 1999 album of the same name, this new cover also featured Alan Jackson, who at the time famously protested the CMA's while performing for dishonoring veteran artist George Jones. Although the song wasn't promoted as a single, enough radio stations played it to have it climb to #38 on the Country Singles chart. It was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration, which ironically was won by what the song was rallying against, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's "Let's Make Love". George will return to this series.

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And here's the studio album version of "The Best Day"...

Up tomorrow: These alt-rockers get to opposite shores.