Songoftheday 10/30/23 -I was 20 and she was 18, we were just about as wild as we were green in the ways of the world...

 

 

"Red Rag Top" - Tim McGraw

from the album Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #40 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 2

 

Today's song comes from Tim McGraw, who saw all four singles from his sixth studio album Set This Circus Down go to #1 on Billboard magazine's Country Songs airplay chart as well as cross over to the top-40 on the Hot 100 with "Grown Men Don't Cry", "Angry All The Time", "The Cowboy In Me", and "Unbroken".  With this clout Tim was able to take charge and do two striking things for his next release, Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors in 2002. First, as implied in the name, he had his touring band backing him instead of studio musicians which was the norm in the genre. Second, McGraw took a big chance with the subject matter of the lead single "Red Ragtop". Written by Jason White for that singer/songwriter's own album from the year prior, the lyrics start out with Tim singing about a young love affair, where the "Red Ragtop" was the car they drove to the edges of town to canoodle. However, after a brief two-line chorus, we're back to Tim meeting her mother, but at that time the young lady was already pregnant. Here's where it stops getting Hallmark and starts getting real. Since she was still in school and he was unemployed, they made the decision not to have the baby. THE word is never used, but there is absolutely no vagueness on what they did (it wasn't adoption). They promised to be there for each other, with the tear-inducing amended chorus...

But on the way home that night
On the back of that red ragtop
She said, "Please don't stop loving me"

 

But the third verse spells out that they broke up after a year, and lost touch with each other. After a final verse that finds Tim by chance near a girl with the same features, the final chorus coda, "I was back in that red ragtop on the day she stopped loving me" hits like a brick. The production by McGraw with Byron Gallimore and Darran Smith is appropriately punchy, with the guitars taking center stage. The result is a potent story based on real life for many people who listen to country music and Tim's delivery carries so much baggage that you can't not feel invested in the story. In fact, no music video was made because none was really needed...

 

Since some country radio stations refused to play the song due to the lyrical content (idiots), the song failed to go to #1 on Billboard's Country Songs chart, though it did manage to at least make the top-5 and reach the top-40 on the Hot 100 for a couple weeks in December of 2002. The Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors album, released in November of that year, spent two weeks at #2 on both the Billboard 200 sales tally and the Country Albums list (behind Shania Twain's Up!), going on to sell over three million copies.

 

Both Tim and the album will be back to the series.

 

(10/10)

 

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

 

Here's songwriter Jason White's version from his 2001 album Shades Of Grey. I have to say McGraw's weathered voice suits the song a bit better...

 

 Tim performed the song on The Tonight Show...

 

 Next up, on a televised concert behind the album...

 

 

and lastly, on tour in 2009...

Up tomorrow: Another country singer forgets what year it is.