Songoftheday 5/21/22 - Everybody wants an easy ride on the merry-go-round that we call life...

 

 

"That's The Way" - Jo Dee Messina

from the album Burn (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #25 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 10

 

Today's song comes from country music singer Jo Dee Messina, whose sophomore album I'm Alright has scored a pair of top-40 crossover hits on Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 chart in 1999 with "Stand Besides Me" and "Lesson In Leavin'".  A year later, Jo Dee returned with her third release on Curb Records, Burn. The uptempo song "That's The Way" was released as the lead single from the set. Written by Holly Lamar (who co-wrote Faith Hill's "Breathe", the biggest Hot 100 hit of the year) and Annie Roboff, the song is a pep talk about how life throws you curve balls and your goal is to swerve with them as best you can. It's a bright, positive message, and a bright positive song that's rooted in realism but at least doesn't sugar coat things. I mean, it's the same message that's in Celine Dion's "That's The Way It Is", but just in a slighty different genre, since producers Byron Gallimore and Tim McGraw give the record a spaciousc sound, but far from a country record just like McGraw's wife Faith Hill's concurrent work. In return, Messina got the biggest country radio hit of her career...

 

 "That's The Way" became Jo Dee's third top-40 hit on the Hot 100 in August of 2000. The song spent four weeks at #1 on Billboard's Country Singles chart, her longest stay at the top. Internationally, the single also topped the Canadian Country chart. The Burn album, released in August as "That's The Way" was peaking, was her first top-40 record on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #19, while topping their Country Albums list for a week, going on to sell over a million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2001, "That's The Way" was nominated for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, losing to Faith Hill's "Breathe". Both Messina and the Burn album will return to the series.

(7/10)

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Here's Jo Dee singing "That's The Way" in concert in 2016...

Up tomorrow: This country trio is hoping for the morning.