Sure, you remember.
It was a brain-frying day in July. You were out of school, out of town, out for a good time but a bit out of sorts when that damn song on the radio kept crashing into your consciousness like a SWAT team at the wrong address.
Or maybe you recall it in a different frame. You were in love, in the mood, in the money and in up to your eyeballs with prepositional phrases when that lovely melody wafted in on a rare breeze and suddenly your heart was floating free of your body.
Is it coming back to you?
For reasons as mysterious as black holes or the popularity of Nashville hot chicken, July has been a particularly congenial month for country songs to hit No. 1 on the charts, thus earning incessant airplay and doing their best to lodge forever in your memory like the college loan bills in your mailbox.
Here are 10 summer-scented examples.
On July 5, 2014, Luke Bryan’s “Play It Again” ruled the airwaves, followed a week later by Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood’s Thelma-and-Louise-y “Something Bad.”
Then, a week after that, Jake Owen’s seized the championship flag with “Beachin’.”
Florida Georgia Line commanded the last week of that July with “Dirt,” which would stay on for another round and become the first No. 1 country single of August 2014.
Reaching back a bit farther, we note that Lady Antebellum’s “I Run to You” reached the summit on July 25, 2009.
It was even bigger news, though, when Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying” reached No. 1 on July 17, 2004 and stayed there for seven weeks (eventually winning two Grammys).
And has it really been 25 years since Alan Jackson went muddin’ in “Summertime Blues”?
Folks who were around when dinosaurs walked the earth still have a soft spot for Bobby Bare’s “Marie Laveau,” which raised its spooky head over all its competitors on July 20, 1974.
Country music’s first No. 1 single this July was Lee Brice’s “Rumor,” succeeded a week later by Black Shelton’s “God’s Country.”
We’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, stay as cool as you naturally are.
