Songoftheday 6/21/22 -I had big plans for our future said I'd give you the whole world somehow, I tried making good on that promise thought I'd be so much further by now...

 

 

"Best Of Intentions" - Travis Tritt

from the album Down The Road I Go (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 10

 

Today's song comes from country music artist Travis Tritt, who grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, where he worked low-level jobs until he got discovered and signed to Warner Brothers Records in the late 1980's. His debut single, "Country Club", fit in the neo-traditional vein that brought Randy Travis, Alan Jackson, and Garth Brooks to fame. The song climbed to #9 on Billboard magazine's country chart in the fall of 1989, spending a half-year on the list, and became the title for his debut album, released at the beginning of the following year. Country Club made it to #70 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #3 on the Country Albums list, spending a whopping 159 weeks on the latter and going on to sell over two million copies. The second single from the record, the ballad "Help Me Hold On", landed Tritt has first country #1 in both the U.S. and Canada in only his second try. In all a total of five songs out of ten from the record placed on the chart.

Travis returned in 1991 with his sophomore effort It's All About To Change, which made it to #22 on the Billboard 200 and #2 on the Country Albums list, selling over three million records. The lead single, "Here's A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)", spent a week at #2 on the Country Singles chart, and was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1992, losing Best Country Song to "Love Can Build A Bridge" by the Judds, as well as Best Male Country Vocal Performance, which Garth Brooks took home for his Ropin' The Wind album. That was followed by "Anymore", which scored Tritt a second #1 country hit for two weeks. The third of the four top ten hits from the album, "The Whiskey Ain't Workin'" with rockabilly country artist Marty Stuart, spent a week at #2 on the country chart, and won the Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration at the show in 1993.

Tritt's third disc, T-R-O-U-B-L-E, placed five of its tracks on the country radio charts, with the second single, again another ballad with "Can I Trust You With My Heart", going to #1 for two weeks in 1993. The lead single, "Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man", hit #5 on the country chart, and was nominated for the Best Male Country Vocal category, which went to Vince Gill for "I Still Believe In You". The title track "T-R-O-U-B-L-E", a remix of the Elvis hit from 1975, missed the country radio top ten at #13, but was a huge draw in the clubs, and sold enough singles to "bubble under" the pop Hot 100 at #108.

After a holiday set at the end of 1992, Tritt released his fifth studio album It's All About To Change in 1994. The record was his first to have its lead single, "Foolish Pride" go to #1 (of course continuing his streak of ballads to top the list). The album went to #20 on the Billboard 200, the highest rank on that list of his career, and #3 on the Country Albums chart. Another collaboration with Stuart, "Honky Tonkin's What I Do Best" from Marty's album of the same name, went to #23 on the country radio chart and was nominated for the Best Country Vocal Collaboration Grammy, which went to "High Lonesome Sound" from Vince Gill with Alison Krauss & Union Station. After his first Greatest Hits - From The Beginning collection, which came a notch from matching the peak of his last album at #21 on the Billboard 200, Travis released his first studio set without longtime producer Gregg Brown, The Restless Kind, with then-hit producer Don Was (of Was Not Was) at the helm. Though it also placed five songs on the country radio chart, it was his first studio set to not spin off a #1 single. The same was true and even more so with his following release, No More Looking Over My Shoulder, which was his first to miss the top half of the Billboard 200 at #119 and failed to even have a top-20 country radio hit, though lead single "If I Lost You" went to #29 there and sold enough cassingles to actually be his first to make the crossover "pop" Hot 100 chart at #86. 

At this point, Travis left Warner Brothers for Columbia Records, where he recorded his first album of the new millennium, Down The Road I Go. His first single for the label was "Best Of Intentions", a ballad Tritt wrote himself. In it Travis sings to his love that he hasn't been the perfect man and given them what he feels he should, but he's tried his best and begs her to stay with him (not sure if she feels the same way though). It's sung in earnest, though, and it's not uber-corny with high promises, and comes across as a "I married well out of my league" vibes. The music video takes it a step farther casting Tritt as a convict...

 

"Best Of Intentions" became Travis' first top-40 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in December of 2000. The song returned him to #1 on Billboard's Country Singles chart for the first time in six years, spending one week there. Internationally, the single made it to #3 on the Canadian Country chart. The Down The Road I Go album, released in October of that year, peaked at #51 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #8 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over a million copies. Both Travis and the album will return to the series.

(6/10)

Up tomorrow: This junkanoo dance track searches for pets.