Tim McGraw

The eve of the release of his third Curb Records album, All I Want, found Tim McGraw in a radio studio debuting the album live for millions of radio fans on six continents. The first single from the album. "I Like It, I Love it," shot to the top spot on every trade sheet's country single chart almost as fast as copies of the song flew off record store shelves. And All I Want was surely one of 1995's most anticipated releases with sales for the disc blowing past the 2 million mark. All this from a man who was barely a blip in country music's radar screens before the March 1994 release of his second album, "Not a Moment Too Soon" propelled the young Louisianian to instant superstardom. "When I recorded Not A Moment Too Soon," McGraw says, "we thought we were onto something that we had a good album with a good variety of songs. But I don't think we had any idea of what we actually had." In fact, no one could have predicted the mercurial rise of McGraw's career because what they had quite frankly, was a monster. Not A Moment Too Soon sold over 5 million date and garnered McGraw scores of awards and nominations. It was Billboard's sixth best- selling album of 1994 - regardless of genre - and out-paced offerings from Mariah Carey, Pink Floyd and even edged country stalwart Garth Brooks 'The Hits' to become the year's top selling country album. 

"We were as surprised as everyone else," McGraw admits . "But I can't 
say the pressure hit me all that hard. When you prepare yourself it's just playing baseball or football or anything else. You always visualize yourself making a great play. You do it enough times in your head so that when that play actually happens, you've had a little bit of experience with it. I think that anybody who's in the music business for the long haul - who knows that it's what they want to do - is constantly 
focusing on the good things that are going to happen in the future." 

A native of Start, Louisiana, McGraw did little more than dabble in music during his early and teen years. After graduating from high school with honors, he enrolled at Northeast Louisiana University to study law. "then I got my grades back the first semester," he recounts, "and I knew that wasn't going to work." From pre-law, he switched to sports medicine, but his love of music gradually began to eclipse his commitment to academics and he left college after his third year. In 1989, he moved to Nashville, when he did the usual club-singing apprenticeship. Two years after his arrival, Curb Records signed him. 

His first album. Tim McGraw yielded three charted singles : "Welcome To The Club," "Memory Lane" and "Two Steppin Mind." But it wasn't until Not A Moment Too Soon that McGraw really started burning up the charts. Among all the other gems on the album, was a silly, raucous. politically incorrect world-beater called "Indian Outlaw." It simply melted the competition.  He followed it with "Don't Take The Girl," a ballad so poignant and sentimental it drove hardened disc jockeys to tears - along with the rest of America. This one-two punch, along with the other three Top 10 hits, did it for McGraw. 

Charged with following up the phenomenal success of his last effort, McGraw poured his soul into making All I Want, What you'll hear on the album is a singer who immerses himself so completely in the emotion of the moment that you're swept along with him. "I Like It, I Love it" has already become the ultimate party anthem and is gaining additional exposure on the soundtrack of the Julia Roberts / Dennis Quaid movie, Something To Talk About, "All I Want is A Life" offers America's chronically neglected working class the rallying cry, "I'm sick of  the crumbs / I want a piece of the pie." "Can't Be Really Gone" confronts us with devastation that attends a lover's departure and reminds us of all the desperate rationalizations we use to roll back time. 

"Maybe We Should Sleep On It," 'The Great Divide," "Don't Mention Memphis" and "When She Wakes (And Finds Me Gone)" explore the various shades of relationships out of balance, while "She Never Lets It Go To Her Heart' and "You Got The Wrong Man" conjured up love's stabilizing and restorative powers. "I Didn't Ask And She Didn't Say" evoked those awkward, mixed feelings that envelop us when we meet an old lover. "Renegade" and "That's Just Me" are plain-spoken and high-spirited tributes to rugged individualism. 

"I don't want anybody to get bored with me," McGraw says. hinting at great things to come. "I don't want to be three albums down the road and everybody's heard all I can do". 

Early indications are that Everywhere is equal to the task of following All I Want & Not A Moment Too Soon and McGraw's continued musical growth bodes well for country music. It's safe to say that this young man from Start has a long way to go before he even sees the finish line.

Discography:

 

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