Songoftheday 6/23/22 -Her parents never took the young girl to church, never spoke of His name never read her His word...

 

 

"The Little Girl" - John Michael Montgomery

from the album Brand New Me (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #35 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 4

 

Today's song comes from John Michael Montgomery, who after dominating country music radio during the 1990's, finally landed a top-40 crossover hit (thanks to Billboard's rule changes) in the beginning of 1999 with "Hold On To Me" from his fifth album Leave A Mark. In the spring of that year, John came back with his next record, Home To You, and title track "Home To You" just missed the pop top-40 as well at the close of the 1999. 

Montgomery returned in the fall of 2000 with his seventh studio release Brand New Me. The lead single from the set was the morality parable of "The Little Girl". Written by bluegrass artist/writer Harley Allen, the song starts out on a high horse, with the first verse about how this little girl's parents were non-believers (either athiests, agnostics, or just didn't go to church we don't know). But then the story takes a dark turn as the parents are addicts and alcoholics, leaving the girl in a lonely life, Then, the dad yeets both the parents in a murder-suicide in front of her. Assumedly after time, the girl gets adopted to a family who did take her to church, where she sees the Jesus on the cross statue and tells the teacher he was there with her when her parents died. Oh Boy. So this all is to blame everything on the lack of religion, fitting considering we are still having this same argument from people who just want to play Russian Roulette with their children in school hoping they won't be in the mass shooting one. It's proselytizing, it's blaming the wrong thing (like no religious people drink and drug?), and what could have been a sad story spotlighting child abuse in America, it takes the "guns don't kill people" route. I'll say the production by Montgomery, Buddy Cannon, and Norro Wilson is nice, and Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski's background vocals bring a sweetness to the convoluted message, and considering his history not too long after this album, he's not exactly the one that should be giving it...

 

 

"The Little Girl" became John Michael's second top-40 crossover hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in October of 2000. The song returned Montgomery to #1 on the Country Airplay chart for the first time in five years, where it stayed for three weeks. Internationally, the single also topped the Canadian Country chart. The Brand New Me album, released in September of that year, brought Montgomery back to the Billboard 200 sales tally top-40 at #15, while reaching #2 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over a half million copies.

 

Despite the success of "The Little Girl", just like John Michael's last album, both of the follow-up's relatively tanked. "That's What I Like About You",  a raucous rock-country stomper, stalled right under the country top-40 at #44, then "Even Then", an attempt to recover with a sweet love ballad, stopped cold at #59. It didn't help that Montgomery's label, Atlantic, was in the process of winding down to shutter, moving the singer over to parent label Warner Brothers. But Montgomery will be back to the series eventually.

(3/10)

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Here's Montgomery performing the song for an awards show with pop/folk singer Jewel backing him up....

Up tomorrow: St. Louis rapper wants you to "bring it on".