Songoftheday 7/6/22 - I think I'll take a moment celebrate my age, the ending of an era and the turning of a page...

 

 

"My Next Thirty Years" - Tim McGraw

from the album A Place In The Sun (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from country music star Tim McGraw, whose fifth studio album A Place In The Sun had already scored a trio of crossover top-40 hits on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 "pop" chart with "My Best Friend", "Something Like That", and the top ten success of "Please Remember Me". The fourth offering from the set, "Some Things Never Change", did make the country top ten at #7, while also topping the Canadian country chart, but fell short of the top half of the Hot 100 at #58. 

For the fifth and final single from the record would be the best song of the whole bunch. "My Next Thirty Years" was written by Phil Vassar, an up and coming artist who was about to have his own crossover country hit with "Just Another Day In Paradise" when Tim recorded the album. The song has Tim marking an age milestone in his life that he actually already reached in 1997, entering a new decade with the peace of what came before and the hope of what lies ahead. I also truly identified with the song coming to that point myself a year later than Tim. Vassar's lighthearted but sincere verses's about what he thinks he'll do ("Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late, drink a little lemonade and not so many beers") coupled with more altruistic lines like "Find a world of happiness without the hate and fear" that grounds the mid-tempo piece. It was a fantastic song to two-step to, to listen on the radio, or to sing at your birthday party, and it returned Tim to the top of the country chart for over a month...

 

 "My Next Thirty Years" became the fourth top-40 crossover hit on the Hot 100 in December of 2000. The song topped Billboard's Country Singles chart for five weeks. Internationally, the single got as high as #6 on the Canadian Country Chart before that country's trade magazine, RPM, closed shop. 

 

Along with the five singles, three other album tracks from A Place In The Sun received enough airplay to place on the Country Singles chart. "Seventeen" spent 15 weeks on the list, going as high as #64,  "The Trouble With Never" went to #66 in its five weeks on the chart, and "Senorita Margarita" spent a single week at #74. (Back then the "album bombs" were mostly country radio happenings.) Tim will be back to the series soon enough...

 

(10/10)

 

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Here's Phil Vassar performing his song for a radio gig...

 

 Up tomorrow: R&B singer has a groundbreaking crush.