“Hometown Honeymoon”
Alabama
Written by Josh Leo and Jim Photoglo
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
June 4, 1993
Alabama tops the chart with a small town love song.
The Road to No. 1
American Pride was a big hit for Alabama, and its fourth single followed its two predecessors to the top.
The No. 1
“Hometown Honeymoon” is standard Alabama album filler.
The problem with Alabama is that they mostly made album filler, so it was rare to have an album produce a string of excellent singles, even if radio put all of them in heavy rotation.
This particular effort is warmhearted and benefits from some excellent fiddle work that keeps things humming along nicely.
The concept is thin and forgettable, but they do their best to sell it. But you can tell when Randy Owen knows he has a winner. You get a vocal from him that’s more energetic than what he does here.
The Road From No. 1
They’ve got another No. 1 single on deck this year, from their next album, The Cheap Seats. But American Pride signals the end of an era. It was the last Alabama album to produce three No. 1 singles. The hitmaking machine is starting to slow down.
“Hometown Honeymoon” gets a B-.
Every No. 1 Single of the Nineties
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Yeah, I pretty much agree that this is more of a “filler” song, and for me, it’s the weakest and least memorable single from American Pride. I’m actually surprised it went number one. That said, it’s still an enjoyable listen when the weather is warmer and the windows are down. The fiddle playing throughout has always been my favorite part of the song, and it’s what I remember most about it from the few times I heard it before I temporarily switched to oldies radio around this time in ’93.
A song this innocuous and harmless must be an Alabama single. A program director’s dream of a radio single because nobody will change the station. But then again, nobody will want to seek out the single or album it is found on, much less remember the song at all.
This was another of the songs that caught my ear and made me seek country stations to listen to in order to hear certain songs when I was first getting into country music.