Tim McGraw
Samuel Tim McGraw
BORN: May 1 1967, Delhi, LA
When Tim McGraw debuted in the early '90s, few would have predicted
that he would eventually take over Garth Brooks' position as the most
popular male singer in country music. Yet that's exactly what he did,
thanks to a string of multi-platinum albums, a high-profile marriage to
fellow superstar Faith Hill, and Brooks' own inevitable decline. His
sound epitomized the strain of commercial country that dominated his
era: updated honky tonk and Southern-fried country-rock on the uptempo
tunes, well-polished, adult contemporary-tinged pop on the ballads.
Helped out early in his career by several novelty items, McGraw simply
wound up cranking out hookier hits on a more consistent basis than any
of his peers. By the late '90s, he was not only a superstar among
country fans, but a mainstream celebrity with a large female following.
Samuel Timothy McGraw was born in Delhi, LA, on May 1, 1967. Though he
didn't know it until years later, his father was baseball player Tug
McGraw, a star relief pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies and New
York Mets who'd had a brief affair with McGraw's mother. He was raised
mostly in the small town of Start, LA, near Monroe, and grew up
listening to a variety of music: country, pop, rock, and R&B. He
attended Northeast Louisiana University on a baseball scholarship,
studying sports medicine, and it was only then that he started playing
guitar to accompany his singing. He played the local club circuit and
dropped out of school in 1989, heading to Nashville on the same day his
hero Keith Whitley passed away. He sang in Nashville clubs for a couple
of years and landed a deal with Curb in 1992. His debut single, the
minor hit "Welcome to the Club," was released later that year, and his
self-titled debut album appeared in 1993 but failed to even make the
charts.
McGraw's fortunes changed with the lead single from his 1994 sophomore
effort, Not a Moment Too Soon. "Indian Outlaw" was embraced as a
light-hearted, old-fashioned novelty song by fans but was heavily
criticized for what some regarded as patronizing caricatures of Native
Americans. Despite some radio stations' refusal to air the song, it
reached the country Top Ten and even crossed over to the pop Top 20.
All the publicity helped send McGraw's next single, the ballad "Don't
Take the Girl," all the way to the top of the country charts; it too
made the pop Top 20. The album kept spinning off hits: "Down on the
Farm" hit number two, the title track went to number one in 1995, and
the novelty tune "Refried Dreams" also reached the Top Five. Not a
Moment Too Soon was a genuine blockbuster hit, eventually selling over
five million copies and topping both the country and pop album charts;
it was also the best-selling country album of the year.
McGraw's follow-up, 1995's All I Want, immediately consolidated his
stardom with the number one smash "I Like It, I Love It." The album
topped the country charts, reached the pop Top Five, and sold over two
million copies. Once again, it functioned as a hit factory thanks to
the number two "Can't Be Really Gone," the number one "She Never Lets
It Go to Her Heart," and the Top Five "All I Want Is a Life" and "Maybe
We Should Just Sleep on It." Over 1996, McGraw supported the album with
an extensive tour, accompanied by opening act Faith Hill. In October,
after the tour was over, McGraw and Hill married, in a union of country
star power that drew plenty of attention from mainstream media. It
doubtlessly helped McGraw's next album, 1997's Everywhere, become
another crossover smash; it topped the country charts, fell one spot
short of doing the same on the pop side, and sold four million copies.
The lead single was a McGraw-Hill duet called "It's Your Love," which
not only hit number one country, but made the pop Top Ten. Three more
singles from the album — "Everywhere," "Where the Green Grass Grows,"
and "Just to See You Smile" — hit number one, and two others — "One of
These Days" and "For a Little While" — reached number two. Meanwhile,
"Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me," another husband-and-wife duet
from Hill's 1998 album Faith, climbed into the Top Five.
With the multi-platinum success of Everywhere, McGraw was poised to
take over Brooks' throne as the king of contemporary country, a
transition that only accelerated when Brooks confounded his fans with
the Chris Gaines project. McGraw, meanwhile, just kept topping the
charts. His next album, 1999's triple-platinum A Place in the Sun, hit
number one country and pop, and four of its singles also hit number
one: "Please Remember Me" (which featured Patty Loveless), "Something
Like That," "My Best Friend," and "My Next Thirty Years." 2000 brought
McGraw's first Greatest Hits compilation, a best-selling smash, and
another Top Ten duet from Hill's Breathe album, "Let's Make Love." The
song later won McGraw his first Grammy, for Best Country Vocal
Collaboration. Also in 2000, McGraw had a brush with the law when he
and tourmate Kenny Chesney got involved in a scuffle with police
officers, after Chesney attempted to ride one of the officers' horses;
McGraw was later cleared of assault charges and spent the rest of 2000
on a second tour with Hill.
Released in 2001, Set This Circus Down (number one country, number two
pop) kept McGraw's hit streak going into the new millennium, giving him
four more number ones — "Grown Men Don't Cry," "Angry All the Time,"
"The Cowboy in Me," and "Unbroken" — just like that. In 2002, his duet
with protégée Jo Dee Messina, "Bring on the Rain," also
went to number one. For the follow-up album, McGraw defied country
convention by entering the studio not with session musicians, but with
his road band, the Dancehall Doctors, a unit that had been together
since 1996 (with some members around even before that). Tim McGraw was
released in late 2002 and produced Top Ten hits in "Red Rag Top" and
"She's My Kind of Rain"; it also featured a startlingly faithful cover
of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer." McGraw kept the formula the same on
2004's Live Like You Were Dying, utilizing his road band, as well as
co-mixing/producing the record himself. Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 arrived
in 2006.