Songoftheday 1/26/23 - Well if you ask me where I come from, here's what I tell everyone...

 

 

"Where The Stars And Stripes And The Eagle Fly" - Aaron Tippin

from the album Stars And Stripes (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #20 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

 

Today's song comes from country music singer Aaron Tippin, who was born in the Florida panhandle and grew up in South Carolina, before heading to Nashville to start a music career. He began as a writer, then was signed to RCA Records as a performer. Tippin's debut album was released in the beginning of 1991, with title track "You've Got To Stand For Something" as the lead single. Written by Tippin with Buddy Brock, the politically encouraging workingman's song climbed to #6 on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart, while the You've Got To Stand For Something album hit #153 on the Billboard 200 sales tally and #23 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over a half million copies. 

A year later, Tippin returned with his sophomore effort Read Between The Lines, which would become his most successful album, reaching #50 on the Billboard 200 spending over a year on the chart while getting to #6 on the Country Albums tally, and selling over a million records, his sole set to do so. Lead single "There Ain't Nothin' Wrong With The Radio" was also his biggest hit, spending three weeks at #1 on the Country Singles chart. That was followed by Call Of The Wild in 1993, with the first single "Working Man's PH.D" making it to #7 on the Country radio chart. There was a bit of a slump on his next release a year later, Lookin' Back At Myself, which failed to send a single to the country top ten (best was "I Got It Honest" at #15), but while the album stopped in the lower half of the Billboard 200 at #114, it continued his streak of selling at least a half-million copies.

Aaron rebounded in a big way in 1995 with his #1 country single "That's As Close As I Get To Loving You", from his fifth album Tool Box, and my favorite of his. The song also "bubbled under" the pop Hot 100 chart at #101, just missing having his first crossover hit. Nevertheless, it would be his final studio album for RCA, who released a Greatest Hits...and Then Some collection in 1997 but neglected to promote its two new songs at radio. 

Tippin moved over to the new country music label from Walt Disney, Lyric Street, who had just started and was about to have more success with acts like Rascal Flatts and SHeDaisy. His first single for the company, the midtempo "For You I Will", climbed to #6 on the Country Singles chart, and landed the singer his first crossover hit on Billboard's Hot 100 at #49 in 1999. A second single from the album, "I'm Leaving", also hit the Hot 100 at #87, while making it to #17 on the country radio list, but the album became his first to miss the Billboard 200 sales tally, while stalling down at #23 on the Country Albums list (the company wasn't as adept is selling records yet). 

Despite the tepid showing, Lyric Street gave Tippin a second chance, and he released People Like Us in 2000. The first single from the record, the fun comic fun of an uptempo song "Kiss This", brought Aaron back to the top of the country radio chart for the first time in five years, and the song just missed the Hot 100 by a couple of notches at #42. However the two follow-up singles were only moderate to minor hits.

But then came 9/11.

The terrorist attacks on America on that fateful date brought the country together in spirit, however it caused havoc people didn't anticipate. Radio stations immediately started censoring songs for as much as a possibly misconstrued title, while others with acceptable ones (even if the title had nothing to do with the "theme") were being pushed (think Enrique Iglesias' "Hero"). And then there was another kind spawned, and Aaron was the harbinger of that. Now you can say Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America" led the jingoistic song genre, however that patriotic-pushing song was released months earlier, and just happened to crest by chance during that time. You can say these songs were spawned from Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA", which soared into the Hot 100 top-20 at this time. That song played on emotions about the economic crisis in the rural areas at the time, completely avoiding the corporate giants funding the "conservative movement" that were causing it. 

As per his account, Aaron had written "Where The Stars and Stripes And The Eagle Fly" for his last album but it was cut (rightfully so), and right after the attacks he quickly went and recorded the song to release as a single, which came out a few weeks after the tragedy, with proceeds from the single benefiting the American Red Cross. (I'll say, that is noble of him, those they don't accept blood from "people like me".) The single sold like hotcakes, and became a country radio hit that aided the single becoming the biggest "pop" success of his career. Written by Tippin with Casey Beathard and Kenny Beard, and produced by the singer with Mike Bradley and Biff Watson, it starts out with the usual ad-worthy God Bless America lyrics an AI could have made up right now, until it comes to this line...

"I pledge allegiance to this flag
If that bothers you, well, that's too bad"

 

Who is bothered by you pledging allegiance, Aaron? Who exactly? That is the germ that started this whole bully-victim complex a chunk of America and in entirety one political party is now completely diseased from. It's a confrontation for no reason clearly meant for people who are minding their own business, and this is even before we got mired into a war with a country that wasn't even involved with it (and ignoring one that did). I mean, besides that, the song is a harmless flag-waving anthem that's musically well-written and Tippin does his best with his register (which doesn't seem as strong as his past songs), but that line just takes a giant dump on it. It even came across on the music video, which has powerful clips of the first responders that risked (and in many cases gave) their lives to help during the tragedy and its aftermath, but his smirk when he delivers (I mean lipsyncs) that line speaks volumes...

 

 

As I mentioned, the charity nature of the single coupled with the theme of the song shot "Where The Stars And Stripes And the Eagle Fly" to become Tippin's biggest "pop" hit, reaching the Hot 100 top 20 in the final week of 2001. The song was a big country radio hit, spending a week at #2 on Billboard's Country Songs chart. 

Despite the success of this single, Aaron wasn't ready to release an album behind it yet, as he was already recording a pre-planned Christmas album A December To Remember, which came out just a week after 9/11. His heightened exposure from the single didn't help the set though, as it only got to #42 on Billboard's Country Albums chart, while his version of "Jingle Bell Rock" that opened the set peaked at #52 on the Country Songs list at the close of the year. 

The following spring, Tippin returned with a new single previewing the upcoming Stars and Stripes album, his ninth, which conveniently came out on September 10th for the anniversary. "I'll Take Love Over Money" attempted to mash the boisterousness of "Kiss This" with the "working man message" aided by "Stars and Stripes", but it was a horrid dud, and Nashville thought so as well, as it stalled at #46 on the Country Songs chart. A third single that summer, "If Her Lovin' Don't Kill Me", co-written by John Rich of Big & Rich/Lonestar fame (before he went nuts), was an improvement (though still had too much speak-singing), and at least made the country top-40 at #40. Finally, a duet with wife Thea Tippin, "Love Like There's No Tomorrow", which they wrote together, was the most successful of the trio, though it still stopped at #35. The song probably would've done better if it was released in 1982 instead of 2002. The Stars And Stripes album, even though it included the titular song, only spent a couple of weeks on the Billboard 200 sales tally with a high of #62, though it got at #10 on the Country Albums list.

In 2005, Aaron came back with what was presumed to be the lead single for a new Lyric Street album, but after "Come Friday" again fell short of the country radio top-40 at #42, that was scrapped and Tippin left the label. He started up his own indie imprint Nippit Records and released Now & Then a year later, which was mostly re-recorded versions of his hits with a few new songs. One of them, "He Believed", was his most recent singles chart appearance at #55. The collection made the Billboard 200 for a week at #162, as well as #34 on the Country Albums list.

Since then, Aaron has released three more studio albums on various indie labels. In Overdrive, which came out in 2009 and popped on to the Country Albums chart at #73, contained the pathetic oil-company ad "Drill Here, Drill Now". Four years later, he released a collaborative album with fellow 90s hitmakers Sammy Kershaw and Joe Diffie, All In The Same Boat, which got a little higher at #70. His most recent release, Aaron Tippin 25, which was another group of re-recorded hits of his along with covers and such, came out in 2015.

(3/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Aaron doing a radio stint in 2015...

And lastly, for a web show in 2020...

Up tomorrow: Singer/songwriter is holding out for a DC hero.