Every #1 Single of the Nineties: Sammy Kershaw, “National Working Woman’s Holiday”

“National Working Woman’s Holiday”

Sammy Kershaw

Written by James Dean Hicks, Roger Murrah, and Pat Terry

Radio & Records

#1 (1 week)

July 29, 1994

A nineties No. 1 hit that celebrates working women.

The Road to No. 1

Sammy Kershaw repeated the success of his final release from his second album, Haunted Heart, with the first single from his third album, Feelin’ Good Train.  This gave him his only consecutive No. 1 singles to date.

The No. 1

This song would’ve been unimaginable thirty years earlier.  Nearly thirty years later, it’s perhaps even more unimaginable.

Sammy Kershaw’s “National Working Woman’s Holiday” not only acknowledges the existence of women outside the passenger seat of a pickup truck, it centers her needs as she tries to balance the responsibilities of work and home at the same time.

With the possible exceptions of Kane Brown and Keith Urban, I simply cannot imagine a single male country radio artist recording a song like this today.  Who would even write it?

Anyway, the song is full of empathy and charm, with a working man realizing that as hard as things are for him, his partner is working harder.

It felt so current at the time, yet now it feels like something from the fossilized past.  That’s a bummer.

Kudos to Kershaw for recording it and cheers to the working women that deserve every bit of the praise he gives them.

The Road From No. 1

Sammy Kershaw won’t top the chart again until 1998, but he enjoyed three top ten hits in between No. 1 singles: “Third Rate Romance,” “Meant to Be,” and “Vidalia.”

“National Working Woman’s Holiday” gets a B+. 

Every No. 1 Single of the Nineties

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1 Comment

  1. As much as I love Kershaw and the sentiment behind the song, the song itself has always underwhelmed me even though I am grateful for it.

    It does, however, seem unimaginable that a song like this would even by an idea in
    a mainstream song-writing brainstorm session today.

    Women, when sung about by men in country music, seem to either be idolized or objectified of late, with little room for details as sincere, warm, and real as this.

    Maybe Garth Brooks could do something approaching this.

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