Every #1 Single of the Nineties: Collin Raye, “One Boy, One Girl”

“One Boy, One Girl

Collin Raye

Written by Shaye Smith and Mark Alan Springer

Radio & Records

#1 (1 week)

September 22, 1995

Collin Raye hits the top with the lead single from his fourth studio album.

The Road to No. 1

After “My Kind of Girl” went No. 1, the final single from extremes went top five: “If I Were You.”  Raye then scored back-to-back No. 1 singles from his fourth album, I Think About You.

The No. 1

There’s corny.

There’s cheesy.

There’s sappy.

And then there’s “One Boy, One Girl,” which needs its own damn category.

It’s a typical love song throughout most of the song – “for a moment the whole world revolved around one boy and one girl.”

Nothing special.

Then it gets to the bridge:

He was holding her hand when the doctor looked up and grinned,
“Congratulations, twins!”
One boy, one girl…
Collin Raye sings the final chorus with such solemnity, you’d think he was giving a eulogy for a fallen soldier.
My brain hurts.
The Road From No. 1
A much better ballad is on deck next, and we’ll cover it early in 1996.
“One Boy, One Girl” gets a D.

7 Comments

  1. Very sappy but I don’t hate this song and I am a lover of all thing sad. Sappy is not my thing but somehow this song always worked for me.

  2. This song is sloppily maudlin; the final chorus is embarrassingly bathetic.

    We have songs like this to thank for some people thinking country music is a joke.

    Awful songs are starting to pop up at the top of the charts again with unwanted frequency.

  3. What “Don’t Take The Girl” hath wrought, and in such a po-faced way. I remember hating this song at the time, and distance has not changed my view. As Kevin said, Raye’s delivery in the final moments is so over-the-top that it borders on camp.

      • My wife had twins last July. We found out, well, long before they were actually born.

        I have had this song on the brain since then, and, well…suffice it to say I always thought that line was off, but let’s just say it’s more so when your wife actually HAS them.

  4. I actually used to love this song not so long ago. But yeah, it doesn’t quite hold up for me as well these days. The sappy, cliched, predictable Hallmark movie like lyrics bring it down for me, and are not really my cup of tea. However, I do still really like how it sounds, overall, which is truthfully probably the biggest reason why I still enjoyed it. I like the production, the song’s pretty melody, and the lovely steel playing throughout. And up until the final chorus, Collin’s performance is mostly fine. But yikes, even back when I still really liked the song, his overly dramatic vocals on that last chorus had been known to make me cringe, and that was always my least favorite part of it. I’d probably give it a C, overall. I still rank it above “Don’t Take The Girl,” which not only do I really dislike lyrically, but also sonically due to Tim’s whiny vocals and the boring melody.

    If anything, this one also does bring back some good 1995 memories from when I was getting back into country that year. I remember one day when my step dad and I were riding around with the windows down, we suddenly heard a nearby car with this song coming out of their windows. My step dad then turned the radio on and found the same station that they were listening to with Collin’s song still playing, lol. This was back when I was first truly discovering the joy of riding in a vehicle with the windows down and enjoying country music at the same time. :) Of course, there were better songs much more suited for that at the time (“Party Crowd,” “Adalida,” “Sold,” “Any Man Of Mine,” “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength,” “Darned If I Don’t, Danged If I Do,” anything by Blackhawk or Lee Roy Parnell, etc.).

  5. I blame the producers more than Collin on the last chorus. If you bring the mix down to pp I imagine in his register it would be very difficult to match without unnecessary pathos.

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