Robbed hit of the week 3/6/23 - Garth Brooks' "Wrapped Up In You"...

 

 

"Wrapped Up In You" - Garth Brooks

from the album Scarecrow (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #46

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from one of the biggest-selling music artists of all time, country singer Garth Brooks, who completely sabotaged his career with the trainwreck that was the "Chris Gaines" project in 1999. Despite the purported "soundtrack prequel" to a movie that was never made about this made-up persona, Brooks infamously had his only top-40 hit on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart all the way up at #5 with "Lost In You" (thanks to fans grabbing up the single).  It derailed the multi-million steadfast so much that the next couple years saw just the release of singles from past albums "Do What You Gotta Do", re-works of past hits "Wild Horses", and soundtrack contributions "When You Come Back To Me Again".

That last song, from the Dennis Quaid film Frequency, only made it to #21 on Billboard's Country Songs airplay chart, although getting on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio list at #29, a sign his fortunes in Nashville were definitely at risk. He publicly announced his "retirement" at the time, though promising one more album beforehand. The result, Scarecrow, would also contain that Frequency song, but the rest of the record was a return to his country music roots, which people way overlook saying he was too pop (he definitely wasn't until the Chris Gaines fiasco). The single kicking off Scarecrow was "Wrapped Up In You", written by Wayne Kirkpatrick and produced by Allen Reynolds. A simple love songs draped in traditional acoustic instruments, the song was clearly a herald to say "look, I'm back doing what you love me doing". The groove on the record is infectious, as Garth's best up-tempo work is, but the clearness and space in the production is such a breath of fresh air, not only to his music, but the genre at the time as well. Add in a super-corny music video with a dog, and Garth found himself back in the top tier of the country chart...

(Brooks has been tyrannical keeping his videos off of youtube)

While "Wrapped Up In You" rode all the way to #5 on Billboard's Country Songs chart, the single stalled short of the Hot 100 top-40 in December of 2001. The Scarecrow album, released in November of that year, topped the Billboard 200 sales tally, his most recent studio album to do so, going on to sell over five million copies. 

The next single from Scarecrow was a duet with his future wife Trisha Yearwood, "Squeeze Me In", which rose to #16 on the Country Songs chart while "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #102. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, losing to Willie Nelson and Lee Ann Womack for their "Mendocino County Line". That was followed by "Thicker Than Blood", which hit #18 on the Country Songs list. Lastly, "Why Ain't I Running" got to #24 on the chart, his final one on the Capitol label before spawning his own Pearl imprint. 

 

(7/10)