Songoftheday 11/27/23 - Last night we went to bed not talkin' 'cause we'd already said too much...

 

 

"I Just Wanna Be Mad" - Terri Clark

from the album Pain To Kill (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #27 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 7

 

Today's song comes from Canadian country artist Terri Clark, who had cracked the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 for the first time in the end of 1998 with "You're Easy On The Eyes" from her third album How I Feel. In 2000, Clark followed up with the set Fearless, my personal favorite of hers. However, country radio and the public felt a little different, as the lead single "A Little Gasoline" missed the genre top ten at #13, while stopping at #75 on the Hot 100 (it did make the top ten on the Canadian country chart at #9). 

Terri returned in 2002 with her fifth release Pain To Kill, preceded by the uptempo lead single "I Just Wanna Be Mad". Written by industry pros Kelley Lovelace and Lee Thomas Miller, the lyrics take a lighthearted look at relationships, specifically when the going gets tough. Sung in the perspective of a married woman at that "seven year itch" mark, she stews in her temporary anger but by the chorus professes her fidelity, and she won't be going anywhere. Even if "I'm gonna leave for work without a goodbye kiss", she lets on that in making up "we'll get around to that", which is more hopeful than most. It's an adult and productive yet comic way to tell this story (albeit we don't even know why they were fighting), but it's definitely worth being told. The production from Byron is bright and shiny like his other clients Jo Dee Messina and Tim McGraw, and Terri's comforting voice tones down the snark...

"I Just Wanna Be Mad" became Clark's second and highest-charting top-40 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 in February of 2003, while spending a week at #2 on their Country Songs airplay chart. The Pain To Kill album, released in January of that year, peaked at #27 on the Billboard 200 sales tally (her first top-40 there) and #5 on the Country Albums list. 

Both Terri and the Pain To Kill album will be back to the series.

(7/10)

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Here's Terri performing the song live on an awards show...

Up tomorrow: Belgian dance act are nonspecific.