Trivia / Tim McGraw

• Black Sheep Hit: His duet with Nelly, "Over and Over." Strangely, this wasn't released to country radio at all.
• Breakthrough Hit: The one-two punch that was "Indian Outlaw" and "Don't Take the Girl".
• Chart Displacement: Largely averted; most of his big hits all went to #1. However, this total does not include "Indian Outlaw" or "Red Rag Top". Some stations objected to the former's politically-incorrect Native American imagery, and the latter's offhanded mention of abortion.
• Colbert Bump: He's had this happen twice:
  • After he performed "Things Change" live at the CMA Awards in 2001, some stations played the live recording, and a studio version (which was also supposedly in circulation at the time) later made it onto Set This Circus Down.
  • Six years later, he performed a new song called "If You're Reading This" at the ACM awards while his then-current Faith Hill duet "I Need You" was charting. So many stations had played the live recording that the song entered the Billboard country charts at #35. As a result, Curb Records rushed "I Need You" into the top 10 and then officially sent "If You're Reading This" to radio. They also reissued his then-current album Let It Go with "If You're Reading This" as a bonus track.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Tim said in an interview with Larry King that he hated "My Next Thirty Years" and has never sung it live, despite it being one of his bigger hits. (Phil Vassar, who wrote the song, has no qualms about it and has performed it in concert himself.)
  • He also hates his third Greatest Hits Album, which Curb Records issued as a stopgap only one album after his last one, as a means of stalling out his contract.
• Executive Meddling: This has long dogged his career.
  • Ever since his breakout in 1993, the label has pretty much hyperfocused on him and ignored almost every other country act on its very large roster. Sure, Jo Dee Messina and Rodney Atkins both had moments of success, but nowhere near the longevity that Tim managed.
  • McGraw himself is not immune to this. First, Set This Circus Down was delayed until 2002 because the label wanted to release a Greatest Hits Album instead. This led to theories that the "leak" of the studio version of "Things Change" was an attempt to circumvent this.
  • Then, his 2007 album Let It Go produced seven singles. After the next two singles following "If You're Reading This" both failed to make Top 10 ^note until that point, he had missed Top 10 all of once since his second album back in 1994), the smart choice would've been to move on to the next album. Instead, Curb released two more singles from Let It Go. Unfortunately, they went with the weak "Let It Go" and "Nothin' to Die For" instead of "Train #10," "Between the River and Me" or "Whiskey and You," which most of the fanbase had been begging to see released since the album came out.
  • It gets worse. While the singles from Let It Go were charting, the label issued his third Greatest Hits Album as an attempt to stall his contract, even though his previous greatest hits was only a year prior. McGraw publicly decried his third Greatest Hits package.
  • And even worse than that! Southern Voice was stalled for nearly a full year after the last single from Let It Go fell off the charts. There was lukewarm at best reception for its three singles: the frivolous "It's a Business Doing Pleasure with You," co-written by Chad Kroeger of Nickelback; the bland List Song "Southern Voice" (which went to #1 almost entirely because it was featured in The Blind Side); and the alt-rock-ish "Still," which at least got some critical praise.^note Note that "Business" and "Still" both missed the Top 10, too; "Still" and "Kristofferson," one of the singles from Let It Go, are his two lowest-peaking singles since 1994.
  • And the stalling continues; despite being from a different label, one song of his from the Country Strong soundtrack got shipped to radio in early 2011 just to delay the first single from the next album.
  • And after that, they sued him for submitting the masters for the last album in his contract too soon, saying it was a "transparent" attempt to get out of his record deal sooner. He countersued and won. Emotional Traffic ended up the last album in his contract, finally freeing him from Curb and allowing him to move to Big Machine Records. Curb even shipped a new single called "Right Back Atcha Babe" the same week that Big Machine released their first single from him.
  • Now that he's free from Curb, it still hasn't stopped... two singles into his first Big Machine album, Curb shipped a duets album consisting of a few duets with his wife, one with ex-labelmate Jo Dee Messina, and a few other scattered songs.
  • A rare positive example. His 2014 single "Lookin' for That Girl" was doing well on the charts, but poorly with critics and listeners. In April 2014, he sang a new song at the Academy of Country Music awards titled "Meanwhile Back at Mama's." That song was well-received, so Big Machine withdrew "Lookin' for That Girl" in favor of releasing "Meanwhile Back at Mama's."
• Missing Episode: He never released an album during his short tenure with Columbia due to the singles faltering.
• Production Posse: Except for "What Room Was the Holiday In", Tim has been produced by Byron Gallimore. Since Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors, he has also tended to use his road band on albums.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • His 2014 single "Shotgun Rider" is not to be confused with a different song of the same name on 2007's Let It Go.
  • He's also recorded two different songs titled "Telluride": one on Set This Circus Down in 2002 (which was later Covered Up by Josh Gracin) and another on The Rest of Our Life in 2017.

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