Songoftheday 8/10/23 - I miss the look of surrender in your eyes, the way your soft brown hair would fall

 

 

"I Miss My Friend" - Darryl Worley

from the album I Miss My Friend (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #28 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from Darryl Worley, who grew up in the Memphis suburbs of southwestern Tennessee, and originally found work in the chemical industry before pursuing a music career. Worley started out as a songwriter before being signed by DreamWorks Records (David Geffen's start-up label) at the end of the 1990s. Darryl's debut album, Hard Rain Don't Last, was released in 2000, and three of its four singles reached the top twenty on Billboard magazine's Country Songs radio chart. The first, the booty-call ballad "When You Need My Love" (in my opinion his best), climbed to #15 on the list, and made it on to the all-genre Hot 100 at #75. That was followed by the neo-traditional mid-tempo pep of  "A Good Day To Run", which almost got as high at #76 on the Hot 100 and did even better on the Country Songs list at #12. Lastly, "Second Wind" made it to #20 on the Country Songs chart and "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #111. The album placed at #33 on the Country Albums sales list.

In 2002, Darryl returned with his sophomore effort, I Miss My Friend, with the title track as the lead single. Written by industry pros Tony Martin, Mark Nesler, and Tom Shapiro, the lyrics handle the sorrow over the loss of a lover in the terms of losing one's soulmate. It doesn't give any cause, meaning it could be either a breakup or a death, which made it more universal, and the simple words express feeling much more emotional than sexual. It's a nice little twist on the usual breakup ballad, even if the production from Frank Rogers and James Stround is a bit stodgy, and in return Darryl scored his biggest country radio hit yet, one that broke him through with the mainstream. The music video contains a twist that shows just one of those two directions...

"I Miss My Friend" became Worley's first single to crack the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in September of 2002, while spending a week at #1 on their Country Songs airplay chart. The I Miss My Friend album, released in July of that year, climbed to #21 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and took a week at #1 on their Country Albums list.

The second single from the record, "Family Tree", was a bit more organic and had an easy going groove, but stalled down at #26 on the Country Singles chart. 

Darryl will be back to the series, but albeit with one of the worst songs to ever make the top-40. 

(7/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Worley performing the song on an internet concert program...

Tomorrow, I'll have my top tunes of last week, and Monday I'll be back with SOTD with a rapper enjoying the moment.