Robbed hit of the week 8/22/22 - Lee Ann Womack's "Ashes By Now"...

 

 

"Ashes By Now" - Lee Ann Womack

from the album I Hope You Dance (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #45 (two weeks)

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from country music singer Lee Ann Womack, who landed her signature song "I Hope You Dance" in the top-20 of Billboard magazine's pop Hot 100 chart in February of 2001. At the same time that Grammy-nominated song was reaching mainstream stations, country radio had already moved on to the next single, "Ashes By Now". That track was a cover of an urban country hit for singer/songwriter Rodney Crowell, which went to #37 on the pop chart and #78 on the country chart in 1980. Crowell wrote the song and produced it with Craig Leon. Womack's version, produced by Mark Wright, updated the production for the new millennium, and her voice better conveys the pained resentment in the lyrics as she sings about a man who continuously does her dirty over and over, and how she should be done for from it. They made a decision to exclude Crowell's third verse about beggars on the street which gives this a lighter focus.  Lee Ann's take was well-received by Nashville, and the genre airplay put her on the Hot 100 again...

Lee Ann's remake of "Ashes By Now" rose to the Country Singles top ten at #4, but stalled five notches under the Hot 100 top-40 in February of 2001. The song didn't have a chance to get mainstream airplay since stations held on to "I Hope You Dance", which peaked at pop radio just a week before, way long past its welcome. Internationally, the single just missed the top-40 on the Canadian Country Chart at #41 as RPM magazine shut its doors at the end of 2000. 

(6/10)

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Here's Rodney Crowell's original, which hit the pop top-40 in America in 1980. The third verse give such deeper meaning to the tune...

 

 and lastly, Womack in concert...