Songoftheday 5/17/23 - It's painted red the stripe was white, it was eighteen feet from the bow to stern light...

 

 

"Drive (For Daddy Gene)" - Alan Jackson

from the album Drive (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from country music traditionalist Alan Jackson, who captured the zeitgeist of the American psyche around the tragic terrorist attacks on 9/11 with his ballad "Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)", which topped Billboard magazine's country radio charts and made the Hot 100 top-40 in the beginning of 2002. On the release of his tenth studio album Drive, the album track "Designated Drinker" with fellow country music legend George Strait got enough radio airplay to spend two months on Billboard's Country Songs chart with a high of #44. Alan's official follow-up single would be the album's title track, "Drive (For Daddy Gene)", which he wrote and named for his recently deceased dad. The song's lyrics use the story of buying an old boat followed by a car to fix up and in the process strengthening the bond between a father and son is endearing without veering into sappiness, and the upbeat nature of the nostalgia is like a hit of dopamine. And the end gets even better, demonstrating Alan knowing that the love of automobiles knows no gender. It's one of his best straightforward story songs, and continued the goodwill his earnest tribute to the country had earned him...

 

"Drive" became Alan's second top-40 crossover hit on Billboard's Hot 100 from the album, and fifth overall, in May of 2002. The song also spent four weeks at #1 on the Country Songs airplay chart. 

Alan and the Drive album will be back to the series.

(10/10)

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Here's Alan performing at the Country Music Awards in 2002...

Next up, his take for AOL Sessions in 2004...

 

 ...and lastly on PBS' Fourth Of July telecast in 2021...

Up tomorrow: Country singer/songwriter defines romance.