Robbed hit of the week 9/19/22 - Mark McGuinn's "Mrs. Steven Rudy"...

 

 

"Mrs. Steven Rudy" - Mark McGuinn

from the album Mark McGuinn (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from singer/songwriter Mark McGuinn, who grew up in North Carolina before moving to Nashville for a music career. Signed to the start-up indie label VFR Records, McGuinn initially planned to release "That's A Plan" as his debut single, but after radio started playing the "B-Side" instead, the positions were switched. "Mrs. Steven Rudy", Written and produced by Mark with Shane Decker, the song is one of unrequited love for a married neighbor whose husband is either/both absent and abusive. He befriends her and becomes her shoulder to cry on, but he refuses to confess his feelings and thus is "friendzoned" by a woman that clearly needs a way out. All this is over a bright and sunny indie-pop production, and McGuinn's appearance as the only "hipster" I can think of in the genre at the time did end up making him stand out. Radio and the public responded favorably, buying his single in droves and sending his up the radio charts as well for his first and biggest success. The music video eschews acting out the plot of the song, having Mark seemingly infiltrate an Amy Grant video set full of colors and shapes...

 

While "Mrs. Steven Rudy" climbed all the way to #6 on Billboard magazine's Country Airplay chart, the song stalled a handful of notches below the top-40 on their all-genre Hot 100 in May of 2001. The Mark McGuinn album, released in May as the single was cresting, went to #117 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #18 on the Country Albums list. 

After the success of the single, "That's A Plan" was released as the next single, where it rose to #25 on the Country Airplay chart. That was followed by "She Doesn't Dance", which gave Mark his third top-40 country radio hit from his debut at #29 (and his last). 

McGuinn returned the following year with a new single on VFR, "More Beautiful Today", but he didn't want the 9/11 tribute promoted to radio, and it ended up stalling down at #54 on the Country Airplay chart. The label ended up folding shortly after, leaving McGuinn on his own. Concentrating on songwriting, Mark wrote Lonestar's "Unusually Unusual", which peaked at #66 on the Hot 100 and #12 on the Country Airplay chart. He released a second album, One Man's Crazy, in 2006, on the Blue Flamingo label. Most recently, McGuinn released two albums in 2021, one studio set built around and titled Unusually Unusual, the other an acoustic album featuring "Mrs. Steven Rudy".

(6/10)

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And here's the remade version Mark did for his acoustic album in 2021...