Robbed hit of the week 10/3/22 - Gary Allan's "Right Where I Need To Be"...

 

 

"Right Where I Need To Be" - Gary Allan

from the album Smoke Rings In The Dark (1999)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #42

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from singer/songwriter/guitarist Gary Allan, who grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, where he started performing country music as a child with his musician father. He later fronted his own band before getting discovered and moved out to Nashville to try to kickstart his career. Gary eventually was signed to Decca Records, where he released his debut album Used Heart For Sale in 1996. The lead single from the set, "Her Man", was traditional love-ballad country, and moseyed up the Country Airplay chart in Billboard magazine to #7 (and #9 on the Canadian Country chart). The album made the Billboard 200 sales tally at #136, and #20 on the Country Albums list and selling a half million copies, but the three follow-up singles from the album all just missed the country top-40 by a handful of notches each. 

Allan came back in 1998 with his sophomore effort, It Would Be You. The title track, another straightforward love ballad, returned the singer to the #7 position on the Country Airplay chart, while just missing Billboard's main Hot 100 chart, "bubbling under" the list at #101. But again, the two follow-ups stalled in the 40's on the country chart, as Decca was in the midst of being absorbed into the MCA/Universal giant star in the merger craze near the end of the millennium. The album got to #21 on the Country Albums chart and #132 on the Billboard 200, but sold quite a bit less.

Moving over to MCA Nashville, Gary released his third disc Smoke Rings In The Dark in the fall of 1999. With this set Allan changed up his sound greatly, eschewing the mainstream Nashville country blandness for a more California-based take from Bakersfield in the vein of Dwight Yoakam and pop singers like Chris Isaak. The title track, released as the first single, was spacious in sound and emotional at its lyrical core, and while it missed the country radio chart at #12, the song spent 29 weeks on the charts, more that any single he had before then, and was his first to make the Hot 100 at #76. It also went to #5 on the Canadian Country chart. A cover of Del Shannon's 60's pop hit "Runaway", an album cut, got enough airplay to pop on to the Country Airplay chart for a week at #74. The second promoted single from the album, "Lovin' You Against My Will", did the usual follow-up fall-off, but at least this time making the country top-40 at #34. 

For the third release from the album, Gary released the "b-side" of the cassingle of "Smoke Rings In The Dark", which had already been getting airplay while the second single was being promoted (and probably stunting its success). "Right Where I Need To Be", written by Casey Beathard and Kendell Marvel, was probably his most rock-inflected single at that time, with the electric guitar prominent in the mix (which was getting widely accepted in the genre thanks to Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney). The lyrics tell a story of a white-collar worker (a rarity in the genre) having to decide between love and career success with an ultimatum from the boss to take a trip. You know how this is going to end, though, but Gary's heartfelt delivery and that damn voice that pierces your heart really sell this well and elevate it over what could have been a Hallmark-level schmaltz in lesser hands. In the end, the song became the biggest hit from the album, and accelerated his presence on the "pop" chart...

While "Right Where I Need To Me" rose Gary to new heights on Billboard's Country Airplay chart, peaking at #5, the song stopped just short of the Hot 100 top-40 in June of 2001, over a year after it made its debut on the country list, where it ended up spending 48 weeks (more than any other of the decade). Internationally, the single made it to #62 on the Canadian Country chart before RPM magazine shut down at the end of 2000. The Smoke Rings In The Dark album, released in October of 1999, came in at #84 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and #9 on the Country Albums list, spending two years on the latter and 47 weeks on the former and selling over a million copies. And in not much time, Gary will make the Hot 100 top-40.

 

(9/10)

 

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Here's Gary doing a live televised concert for the CMT Network...

 

 Next up, an acoustic radio gig from 2012...

and lastly, here's Gary doing a reaction to his own video during COVID lockdown...