My 100 Favorite Charted Country Songs: Begging to You

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Happy new week! I think today is our last sunset at or after 8 PM until next spring. Meanwhile, the days are getting longer south of the Equator. I need a road trip. You don’t “need” this, but you’re getting it anyway: the stroll through my mind via my 100 favorite charted singles in country music. Some of these are obvious…like this one. Begging to You - Marty Robbins Marty Robbins holds a piece of history in pop music (yes, pop, not country): he has the distinction of having the first #1 song in Billboard chart history that was over four minutes long. (You might see things that say it was the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” but it wasn’t. That was the first “rock” song to top the charts at over four minutes in length, but Marty had that beat by four years (and six seconds ). That’s your worthless trivia. There’s nothing “worthless” or “trivial” about this magnificent song. It’s one of those “love is blind” ballads, where the narrator doesn’t like the position he’s in but can’t escape (“you said that I’d come back, you knew what I’d do, and you know you were right”). What sets this apart is “that note” that Robbins hit. Dang, that man could sing. He had a delivery that fit the song (the love and emotion in “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife;” the remorse of “the foul, evil deed I had done” in “El Paso”), and wow, did he deliver in this one. Begging to You Written by Marty Robbins Recorded by Marty Robbins Released as a single, 1963 Peak chart position: #1 (also charted #74 pop) Today’s rock song: “Bad Moon Rising” Just to walk on so you won’t touch the ground: