Songoftheday 2/28/23 - If there's a plane or a bus leaving Dallas I hope you're on it, if there's a train moving fast down the tracks I hope you caught it...

 

 

"Run" - George Strait

from the album The Road Less Traveled (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #34 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from country music legend George Strait, who had landed his fourth top-40 crossover hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 music chart with the song "Go On" in the fall of 2000. A year later, Strait returned with his twenty-first studio album The Road Less Traveled. The lead single from the set was the ballad "Run", written by Tony Lane and Anthony Smith (who co-wrote yesterday's SOTD "Riding With Private Malone"). The song doesn't rely on any pun (a standard in the genre), but rather a direct approach, where George lists the ways his love can travel back to him. The strength of the song is the melody and production; the musical intro is just gorgeous, and the melody and music using unusual chord changes for country sets it apart from the generic competition by a mile. Radio and the fans loved it, and brought George back to the high eschelon of the country chart...

"Run" became Strait's fifth top-40 crossover hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in December of 2001. The song spent four non-consecutive weeks at #2 on their Country Songs radio chart. The Road Less Traveled album, released in November of that year, peaked at #9 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and topped the Country Albums list for a week, going on to sell over a million copies.

At the same time "Run" was at the top of the country radio chart, a holiday single from the singer, "Christmas Cookies", from a compilation of the same name from the record label, spent five weeks on the list, getting as high as #33. Both Strait and the Road Less Traveled album will be back to the series.

(8/10)

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Here's George singing the song in concert from his Live From The Astrodome album, which was recorded on his tour behind the album...

At the ACM Artist Of The Decade concert, Taylor Swift honored Strait by performing "Run" in 2009...

Lastly, George himself performed "Run" at the CMA awards in 2019 with Miranda Lambert...

Up tomorrow: This Lost Boy is ready for the star treatment.