Every No. 1 Single of the Nineties: Alan Jackson, “There Goes”

“There Goes”

Alan Jackson

Written by Alan Jackson

Billboard

#1 (1 week)

September 20, 1997

Radio & Records

#1 (1 week)

September 5, 1997

Alan Jackson’s simple and direct songwriting delivers again.

The Road to No. 1

Alan Jackson repeated the No. 1 success of “Who’s Cheatin’ Who” with the fourth single from Everything I Love.

The No. 1

Alan Jackson doesn’t mince words, and he doesn’t waste them either.  He won’t overwork a lyric to make it rhyme, and he won’t go searching for a lofty metaphor when he just speak plainly and clearly.

“There Goes” communicates intense emotions and paints a vivid picture of a man falling all over again for the woman who has wronged him before, and it does it with simplicity, using “there goes” as a sentence starter to link all of it together.

It’s a song that works as well on a honky tonk jukebox as it does on a rush hour radio set, demonstrating once again why Jackson was so revered by traditionalists but also embraced so strongly by the suburban fan base that powered the nineties country music gold rush.

The Road From No. 1

One more No. 1 single is on deck from Everything I Love, and we’ll get to it in early 1998.

“There Goes” gets an A.

Every No. 1 Single of the Nineties

Previous: Toby Keith, “We Were in Love” |

Next: John Michael Montgomery, “How Was I to Know”

2 Comments

  1. Yet another song I love so much, and another one that brings back so many great memories from 1997, especially of the Maine trip we went on in August of 1997. :) It’s also one of my personal top favorites from AJ.

    Everything about this song is just perfect to my ears. It has a beautiful, unforgettable classic country melody and a shuffle style arrangement full of lovely fiddle and steel. Alan’s warm baritone is, as usual, a perfect fit for the classic feel of the song, and he does a great job of capturing the mixed emotions of the narrator falling for the woman he never expected to fall for again. I especially always liked the “big black widow spider” lyric in the first verse, and how he rhymes “darlin'” with “blue marlin” in the clever and witty second verse. I even love the sound of the twangy guitar that tags the song at the very end. It’s just simply a gorgeous song from start to finish, and it’s too bad it’s another one of his 90’s hits that doesn’t seem to get talked about as much as some of his others. I don’t think Alan himself has performed it at any of his shows in many years.

    The first time I ever heard “There Goes” was actually one day in my dad’s car, not too long before the Maine vacation. I really liked the song right away, with the “black widow spider” line standing out to me the most at that time. In those times, it seemed like Alan was coming out with a new tune every time I turned around, and this was one of my favorites of his yet. Since I was also maturing more as a 12 year old and paying more attention to the lyrics, this song also served as one of my first exposures to some of the more “complicated” relationships between some men and women in a country song.

    The next time I heard it in the rental car with my mom and step dad during the Maine trip, I was so excited to be hearing it again, and it just felt really neat to be hearing a song I first heard back home in Virginia not long ago all the way up in Maine this time. I guess that whole excitement about getting to hear your latest favorite songs on the radio in a different state and in a different car was still kind of new to me then. I specifically remember hearing it when we were crossing the Piscataqua River Bridge and had just entered Maine. On following trips whenever we crossed the bridge again, this song always came to mind. :) I also remember hearing it one other day when we passed by the Admiral Inn motel in Scarborough, which we stayed at the previous year in 1996. “There Goes” was just another perfect song to hear on those beautiful, cooler overcast days and crossing the marshes just south of Portland. I know this is probably sounding repetitive to some, but this is yet another song I still associate with being in Maine every time, and like Toby Keith’s “We Were In Love,” I can close my eyes, listen to this song, and feel like I’m back there again.

    “There Goes” also brings back great memories from the beginning of my 6th grade year and when my mom, dad and I started going to Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, VA almost every Sunday during the Fall of 1997. :)

    “There Goes” was another one of those songs that only came on occasionally as a recurrent after its chart run was finished in the next few years, but when I did get to hear it again, it was always such a treat and a pleasant surprise. On one Saturday night around late 2000 when my dad and I had almost arrived at our favorite local steakhouse, “There Goes” suddenly came on, and even then, it already felt like I hadn’t heard it in ages. Dad was also pleasantly surprised by hearing it again, and he was singing along with it as if he’d only heard it yesterday. I fell in love with the song all over again, and we both wondered why it was rarely played anymore. And then one other day around 2001, I was once again pleasantly surprised when I heard “There Goes” playing on the old pink radio my step dad had on in the kitchen while he was cooking breakfast and I was just walking in. It was then followed by Trisha’s “XXX’s and OOO’s.”

    When we finally went back to Maine in 2008, “There Goes” was one of the songs I’d always enjoy hearing up there once again when listening to a mix cd I made of all the Summer of 1997 country songs I associate with the ’97 trip, and I’d always have it on my Maine Vacation ipod playlist on trips after that. “There Goes” also remained as one of my dad’s favorite AJ songs, and he’s always get excited and turn it up whenever it came on my cd or ipod in the car. :)

    I’m also really looking forward to Alan’s next number one in this feature, which is another one of my personal favorites.

  2. The song is special if for no other reason than the line about how he should be “fishin’ for Blue Marlin/Instead of bein’ hooked again on you.”

    Jackson was often simultaneously silly, smooth, and smart in his songwriting.

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