Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life.  In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.

This will post on January 1, 2025, so let me start off by saying Happy New Year! I am sure that I will be posting something of a New Year’s Wish as well today.

Off to the side of my 2003 list I wrote, “Difficult year!” This could mean that it was difficult to pick ten songs. It could also mean that it was difficult to narrow the list down to ten songs. With my life, it could mean that 2003 was a difficult year personally. I’m not sure. I know that as I got deeper into the 2000’s, there were fewer songs that I liked. Maybe that is it?

Anyway, let’s drift into 2003:

Drift Away was a top 5 hit for Dobie Gray in 1973. In 2002, Gray recorded this as a duet with Uncle Kracker. When the song reached the Billboard top 10 in 2003, 30 years later, it broke a record. Dobie broke the record for the biggest gap between top US top 10 appearances and held that record for 17 years.

How did Uncle Kracker come to record it? You can thank a radio DJ for that. Songfacts explains:

“Although Uncle Kracker liked this song, he only performed it out of necessity at first. He was making the rounds on the morning radio shows to promote his solo debut, Double Wide (2000), which was mostly rap-rock tracks except for the mellow hit single “Follow Me.” Because he was expected to perform a few songs during his appearance, he needed something else to sing in the same vein, and the DJ Scott Shannon suggested the Dobie Gray tune.“

Kracker said, “If it wasn’t for him, that song would have never gotten cut, he pretty much put the bug in my ear for that.”

I like the fact that the cover included the original singer. People liked it, too. It was #1 for 28 weeks in 2003-04 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It broke the record for the longest run atop the tally and held the record for 15 years.

Drift Away

I had my first child in 2002. Over that first year, it was amazing to see the changes in him. I never really understood how fast time flies, until having children.

I was working in country radio in 2003 and I remember hearing Then They Do for the first time. I knew that it would be a huge hit because any parent could relate to the lyrics. They are delivered perfectly by Trace Adkins.

The song begins and describes a typical morning where the singer’s children are causing trouble on the way to school. Naturally, he thinks things will be easier when the children grow up. In time, the children go off to college and get married. It is then that the parents realize that they have more time to themselves now. Their children have accomplished their dreams, but their house and lives feel a lot emptier nonetheless.

It’s sort of a “be careful what you wish for” kind of thing. Be present and enjoy the memories.

Then They Do

The next song is one that I really liked. I don’t necessarily pray to angels when I am down or when I am hurting, but I do pray. I pray to God and ask Him to give me guidance or comfort. I did an in depth study for Sunday School at our church about angels once. That is why I don’t pray to them.

That being said, I do understand that in certain situations, people will often pray. Some, pray to angels. I think in essence, they pray to heaven for help. That’s kind of what I got from Train’s Pat Monahan’s inspiration for the song.

From Songfacts:

The song was inspired by something his therapist, Judy Bell, told him. Monahan told Buzzfeed, she said: “Just remember that we are made up of angels and traitors, and the angel is the one that says, ‘You’re beautiful and you can do anything you want,’ and the traitor is the one that says, ‘You’re ugly and you can’t get anything right.'”

“That song just came from that conversation of, if we all called our angels, what a cool life this would be for all of us,” he said.

The song went to number one on the Adult Contemporary chart.

Calling All Angels

I have always loved Willie Nelson. Some of his duets are just fantastic. I loved Pancho and Lefty with Merle Haggard. I loved To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before and Spanish Eyes with Julio Iglesias. I loved Seven Spanish Angels with Ray Charles. Last week, I could have included Mendocino County Line, his duet with Lee Ann Womack. When he did his duet with Toby Keith, it was a monster country hit.

Toby posted the story behind Beer For My Horses on his website:

“When I was a kid I worked for a rodeo company,” says Toby. “The old timers who worked the stock and stuff in the back would carry a pint of whiskey in their pocket – they were just old cowboys. They would pull it out and say, ‘Here’s to me, here’s to you, we got screwed, so screw you, here’s to me.’ They always had some little toast. One was to hold up the bottle for a drink and say, ‘Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses.’ I kept that in my head a long time thinking I’d write it some day.“

“We did finally, trying to say that maybe it’s time that justice gets back into the judicial system. The big posse goes out and catches the bad guys and everybody comes back to lick their wounds, remember the ones they lost and celebrate with the ones that made it back. You raise your glass and say, ‘Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses, bartender.’ One of those conceptual deals. Soon as we got done writing it I thought man, it’d be cool if we could talk Willie Nelson into singing the Texas verse on that. Obviously he went for it and I think it’s the biggest multi-week #1 either of us ever had.“

In 2008, Toby and Willie starred with Rodney Carrington in the movie of the same name.

Beer For My Horses

The next song was a top five hit for 3 Doors Down. Lead singer, Brad Arnold told Songfacts:

“The song’s just about being away from someone, or missing them,” he clarifies. “And it really doesn’t matter if you’re here without them for all day or all month. It’s just kind of about the lonely and missing of somebody, but people kind of take that sort of as a little bit of a sad song. And in a way, I kind of meant it as a happy song. And the reason being because it’s talking about being here without you, but she’s still with me in my dreams. ‘And tonight, it’s only you and me,’ so the song was really just about that dream. And being in a state of peace, because you’ve got that person there with you in your sleep. And in that way I kind of meant for it to be a little bit of a happy song.”

The song means a lot to many military personnel. Especially those who find themselves away from their loved ones with their lives in danger. At the same time, many think about someone who has passed away and that miss them. However you interpret it, it really is a great song.

Here Without You

Josh Turner is one of the nicest singers I’ve ever had the chance to meet. His voice can rattle things hanging on a wall it is so deep. I remember when his first single (Long Black Train) hit my desk. Personally, I loved it. I got it. I understood it. However, it had a Christian theme to it and I wondered how the listeners would like it.

I love hearing him tell the story of how the song came about. He told AOL Music:

“‘Long Black Train’ was inspired by a vision that I had of a long, black train running down this track way out in the middle of nowhere. I could see people standing out to the sides of this track watching this train go by. As I was walking, experiencing this vision, I kept asking myself, ‘What does this vision mean and what is this train?’ It dawned on me that this train was a physical metaphor for temptation. These people are caught up in the decision of whether or not to go on this train. And this came about in a time of my life where I was trying to figure out who I was as an artist and as a person… I was trying to learn how to deal with the freedom that I had away from home for the first time. ‘Long Black Train,’ the song and the album, are very special to me. It was just one of those things that I felt like God gave to me for a purpose, and I’ve been out here promoting that purpose.”

He wrote the song after listening to some old Hank Williams Sr. songs. He was a college senior. He said he started strumming the guitar and the verses came to him. He never had any intention of releasing the song and noted that when he wrote it, “I didn’t even have a record contract yet!”

Long Black Train

Next is song that has been covered a few times. The First Cut is the Deepest was written by Cat Stevens. He did a demo of the song in 1965. In 1967,  it was a hit for P.P. Arnold in Britain reaching #18 in the charts.

In America, the first version to chart was by Keith Hampshire, who took it to #70 in 1973. Rod Stewart covered it in 1976, taking it to #21 US and #1 UK. Sheryl Crow released her version in 2003, which made #14 in the US and #37 in the UK.

Sheryl recorded it for her hits compilation, “The Very Best of Sheryl Crow.” It was one of her biggest radio hits. It also became her first solo top-40 country hit following the success of her duet with Kid Rock (“Picture”)

First Cut Is The Deepest

Next, the third duet on my 2003 list. This was another one of those songs that after hearing it, I knew it would be a hit. How could it NOT be with Jimmy Buffett on it?

The song came about when writer Don Rollins had with the line “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” It was written for another artist whose album wanted a Jimmy Buffett vibe to it. The artist passed on the song and eventually it came to Alan Jackson. Rollins explains,

“I got the call that it was on hold for Alan, which I thought was strange, because if you hear the demo it’s very island-ly. There are acoustic guitars and steel drum samples, very much Buffett. The idea that someone as country as Alan Jackson might be interested in that song never even occurred to me. Then I got wind that he was wanting to do a duet with Buffett, and it made a little bit more sense at that point.”

This song spent eight weeks at #1 on the Country charts, and won the 2003 Grammy for Best Country Song. It was the first #1 song on the Country chart for Jimmy Buffett.

It’s Five O’clock Somewhere

Last week I picked a remix of Elvis Presley’s A Little Less Conversation. In 2002, the remix had worldwide success. Because of that English record producer Paul Oakenfold took another Elvis song and did a remix of it. This time it was Rubberneckin’.

Rubberneckin’ was a song that Elvis sang in the movie A Change of Habit. It was released as the B-side of Don’t Cry Daddy. It was a top ten hit for him.

The remix only reached number 94 on the Hot 100 chart in the US, but it was big elsewhere. It peaked at number two in Canada, and number three in Australia. It also reached the top 10 in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

Some folks dislike these remixes. I can see where a bad remix would make me feel that way. I really thought these two Elvis remixes were great. I was loving how many people danced to them at parties.

Rubberneckin’

The final song of 2003 is probably the most bizarre. It just sticks out, and the band knew this! I’m talking about I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness. This was a song that was brought to my attention by my ex. I had never heard it before, but one time I was asked to play it at a party and the crowd went crazy!

From Songfacts:

The British magazine Classic Rock named this as their Greatest Rock Song of the ’00s. The band’s frontman Justin Hawkins commented: “All The Darkness ever tried to do was bring a little joy into the glorious realm of rock, but ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ crossed over big time and changed our lives forever. To have been awarded ‘Song Of The Decade’ is overwhelming and I’m very grateful to Classic Rock for everything.”

The band’s former guitarist, Dan Hawkins, told Classic Rock the story of the song: “‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ was such an important song for The Darkness, but when we wrote it I really wasn’t sure about it. The chorus is so stupidly catchy, I thought people were just gonna take it as a complete joke! Right from the start, this song stuck out like a sore thumb.

We started with the riff, which Justin came up with. It sounded really great right away. But when he sang the chorus for the first time, I just said, ‘No, you can’t do that – it sounds ridiculous!’ I really thought people would just laugh at us when they heard it. So for the rest of the song, I tried to make it sound cool, more ‘rock.’ The rest of the song is all in minor key.“

Songfacts also presents this very funny review:

The New York Times wrote that this song “sticks to the listener like hair gel.”

I Believe in a Thing Called Love

So there you have it. Did I miss one of your favorites from 2003? Make sure to tell me about it in the comments.

Next week, I’ll present my list from 2004. The list include one of the funniest group names to say on the radio, a monster debut song, movie music, a dance craze that is still going strong, and a song that still brings me to tears.

Thanks for reading and listening!