Robbed hit of the week 2/19/24 - Chris Cagle's "What A Beautiful Day"...

 

 

 

"What A Beautiful Day" - Chris Cagle

from the album Chris Cagle (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #41

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from country music artist Chris Cagle, whose debut album Play It Loud spun off four charting hits on Billboard magazine's Country Songs chart, with one of them, "I Breathe In, I Breathe Out", crossing over to reach the top-40 on the all-genre Hot 100 in the spring of 2002. A year later, Chris returned with his self-titled sophomore effort, led by the single "What A Beautiful Day". Written by Cagle with Monty Powell, and co-produced by the singer with Robert Wright, it's one of those "counting" country songs, marking by what "day" certain life moments happen in a romance, from meeting to I love yous to day 189 when he mysteriously almost lost her to having a son all the way to 50 years together. It's like a shiny bright "In The Year 2525" but for Hallmark movies. The lyrical touches make it interesting, while the production, dominated by piano runs from the Hornsby/Cohn playbook, is driving without being saccharine. Cagle's affected drawl is nice for this urban cowboy-style fare as well. The music video plays out the lyrics, with Cagle a seemingly ever presence in the plotlines of this meet-cute turned longterm thing...

While "What A Beautiful Day" climbed to #4 on Billboard's Country Songs radio chart, the single stalled one notch below the top-40 on the Hot 100 in June of 2003. The Chris Cagle album, released in April of that year, peaked at #15 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, while spending a week at #1 on the Country Albums list, going on to sell over a half million copies.

Chris' follow-up was the nostalgic rock-country of "Chicks Dig It", which sounds like a re-write of Mark Wills' earlier "19 Somethin'". But as it climbed to #5 on the Country Songs chart, again Cagle missed the top-40 on the Hot 100 on #53. A final single from the record, "I'd Be Lying", made it to #39 on the Country Songs chart. 

(8/10)

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Here's Chris performing at a music festival in 2013...

and lastly at a radio stop-by a couple years prior...