Songoftheday 4/19/22 - She moved into my old apartment that's how we got this whole thing started, she called and said that i had mail waiting there for me...

 

 

"Yes!" - Chad Brock

from the album Yes! (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 10

 

Today's song comes from Chad Brock, who went from being a pro wrestler on the WCW circuit to being a country music star, landing a top-40 crossover hit in the process in the spring of 1999 with "Ordinary Life" from his self-titled debut album. At the end of the year Brock returned with a promo lead-up to his sophomore effort, a remake of "A Country Boy Can Survive" with new lyrics about the turn of the millennium and the feared technical collapse that never happened, dubbed the "Y2K Version" featuring George Jones and the song's original writer and singer Hank Williams Jr.. The dated cash-in got some buzz and climbed to #30 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart and #75 on the Hot 100. That would be followed by the album's title track, "Yes!". Written by Brock with Jim Collins and Stephony Smith, this time Brock forgoes the fad right-wing BS for a standard up-tempo song about finding his love and marks the milestones with the titular exclamation of the affirmative. It's hokey, but it's cute, and it works for his booming voice, and the driving two-step-ready beat produced by Buddy Cannon and Norro Wilson helped the song the biggest hit of his career...

 

 "Yes!" became Chad's second top-40 crossover hit on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in July of 2000. The song spent three weeks at #1 on their country radio chart as well. Internationally, the single also topped the Canadian country list. The Yes! album, released in May of that year, spent two weeks on the Billboard 200 sales tally with a high of 125, while making it to #17 on their Country Albums list. 

The third single from the record, "The Visit", was a return to the storytelling ballad like "Ordinary Life" but dealing with the pain of moving on after the death of a loved one. The song rose to #21 on the Country Singles chart, while just "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #108. It deserved better.

Brock returned the next year with his third album III. Lead single "Tell Me How" was co-written by Larry Stewart of the group Restless Heart (though conspicuously without Chad), and the result was a blatant rewrite of Michael Bolton's "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You" as an even slower ballad. Nashville radio was probably expecting another uptempo charmer like "Yes!", and the single stalled under the country Top-40 at #47. The album also failed to make the country top-40 at #44, and without even a followup single, Brock and Warner Brothers parted ways.

Chad signed on with upcoming label (now powerhouse) Broken Bow Records, and released a series of singles, four of which were minor country radio hits, the biggest being "You Are" which made it to #48 in 2004, then followed by "That Changed Me", which is his most recent chart appearance at #53. No album came from his deal with Broken Bow, and since then he's gone the right-wing grifter route even earlier than most, releasing the horrid "Put A Redneck in the White House" in 2008 and riding the faux-conservative gravy-train. Sad to see.

(8/10)

Up tomorrow: This nutritious singer ends the school year.