Robbed hit of the week 12/5/22 - Jo Dee Messina's "Downtime"...

 

 

"Downtime" - Jo Dee Messina

from the album Burn (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak #46

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from country music singer Jo Dee Messina, who enjoyed the highest-charting single of her career on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in the summer of 2000 with the lead single from her Burn album, "That's The Way". That was followed by title track "Burn", which just missed the top-40 on that chart at #42 in the beginning of the next year. 

The third offering to radio from Burn was the self-help ode "Downtime". Written by singer Carolyn Dawn Johnson (who would go on to have a run of country hits herself) with Philip Coleman, the song has Jo Dee putting a positive spin on a bad situation, having her regroup from a breakup with the wisdom of an older woman. It's peppy, it's adult, and it's not corny, and it's defiant from the beginning, with the line "I tend to lose a part of me when my heart is on the mend, I'll be alright it's safe to say,
'Cause just like your love, this is only a phase...". And damn this was a great song to two-step dance to. Messina can sell a song, and the song became another hit in Nashville...

While "Downtime" climbed to #5 on Billboard's Country Songs chart, the single like "Burn" stopped close to the Hot 100 top-40 in September of 2001.