Robbed hit of the week 11/11/24 - George Strait's "Desperately"...

 

 

"Desperately" - George Strait

from the album Honkytonkville (2003)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #44

 

This week's "robbed hit" comes from country music legend George Strait, whose twenty-second album Honkytonkville started out on a shaky foot when its lead single, "Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa", was a relative disappointment, becoming his first lead single from a studio album to miss the top ten on the country radio chart at #11. (It deserved better.) But he rebounded with the follow-up, "Cowboys Like Us", which spent two weeks at #2 on Billboard magazine's Country Songs airplay chart, and made the top-40 on the all-genre Hot 100 at the close of 2003.  

 

For the third single from the record, George came with the downtempo shuffle of "Desperately". Written by Bruce Robison and Monte Warren, the lyrics have Strait delusional on the backside of a breakup, where he pictures her still there and trying to carry on as a single man. The production from Tony Brown is easy and almost beach music like, with the harmonies on the chorus really elevating this otherwise sad song...

 

 While "Desperately" claimed a second top ten on Billboard's Country Airplay chart from the album at #6, the song stopped a handful of notches below the top-40 on the Hot 100 in May of 2004. Internationally, the single peaked at #5 on the Canadian Country Chart. 

(7/10)

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The "B-side" of the promotional single, the swing nugget "Honk If You Honky Tonk", got enough radio spins to spend eight weeks on Billboard's Country Airplay chart, peaking at #45...

 

 and lastly, here's George performing the song on a country music awards show....