Songoftheday 8/18/22 - I got a funny feeling the moment that your lips touched mine, something shot right through me my heart skipped a beat in time...

 

 

"You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This" - Toby Keith

from the album How Do You Like Me Now?! (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #32 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from country singer Toby Keith, who after building his career in Nashville through the 1990s finally hit big and crossed over to the crossover top-40 in the spring of 2000 with the title song from his fifth studio album "How Do You Like Me Now?!". His next single from the record, the rowdy rock hybrid of "Country Comes To Town", made it to #4 on Billboard magazine's Country Airplay chart, but stopped below the halfway mark on their Hot 100 pop list at #54.  The fourth (initial single "When Love Fades" stiffed) and final single from the album was the more toned down midtempo track "You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This". Written by Toby, who produced the song with James Stroud, the song opens with a kiss, as he cautions the woman he's with to not play with his heart. It turns out they're in public in the middle of the dancefloor. He's got the green light from his friends, but wants to make sure she's on board. He does much better with his serious stuff than the hokey novelty numbers (which mostly pay the bills), and it's natural why this flicker of vulnerability was the fourth single. The music video turns the plot around with a May-December romance between a young man and his older female benefactor (played by Tane McClure, who as Tane Cain had a top-40 hit of her own in 1982 with "Holdin' On") that builds to a torrid crescendo before the final twist....

"You Shouldn't Kiss Me Like This" brought Toby back to the Hot 100 top-40 in March of 2001. The song scored Keith his fifth #1 country radio hit, where it stayed for three weeks. Toby will be back to the series many more times.

(9/10)

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Here's Keith performing the song in concert (after a too-long intro) in 2014...

Up tomorrow: This R&B singer finds an intruder.