“Best of Intentions”
Travis Tritt
Written by Travis Tritt
Radio & Records
#1 (3 weeks)
November 10 – November 24, 2000
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
November 18, 2000
As the music industry slowly began to collapse unto itself at the turn of the century, an early indicator of trouble was major labels in Nashville giving up on their superstar acts. Warner Bros. alone lost Randy Travis and Travis Tritt, both genuine superstars who transitioned to their new labels with their best new music in years.
We sadly don’t get to cover Tritt’s follow up to “Best of Intentions,” as it peaked at No. 2, but it’s safe to say that “Intentions” and “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” was the best one-two Travis Tritt punch since “Here’s a Quarter” and “Anymore” nine years earlier.
“Best of Intentions” has been overshadowed by its enduring successor, and it’s due for a renaissance. One of my favorite mantras is “country music for adults, please.” This is a song that could only be written with enough life experience and accumulated regret to demonstrate so much self-reflection in the first place. Tritt’s heartfelt mea culpa for falling short of his dreams for himself and his partner is poignant, and in my view would work as well as an anniversary song as “Look at Us” or “I’d Love You All Over Again.”
Tritt hasn’t topped the charts again since this hit, and his legacy remains firmly planted in the twentieth century. But let’s take a moment to celebrate his final No. 1 single being one of his very best. Covering four decades of No. 1 country hits have shown what a tricky feat that is to pull off, so good on him.
“Best of Intentions” gets an A.
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This is such a great song. Country could still be great from this timeframe when it wanted to be. I did want to comment on his follow up “A Great Day to Be Alive”. That was also a fantastic song about just enjoying a simple good day. Wish we could get back to this stuff in music.
There’s something satisfying about comebacks in country music, and especially when the comeback isn’t merely a one-off but a sustained revival. Travis Tritt faded into the oblivion quite substantially in the late 90s and seemed likely to stay there until his 2000 Lazarus act. And it was a really good song too, easily the most vulnerable of his career, although I confess that I found the “best of intentions” hook itself to be a bit slight. It was easy to sympathize with the beaten-down narrator and you were rooting for his significant other to give him another chance.
But what was interesting is that the emasculated side of Travis Tritt got him back into the good graces of country radio in 2000 and yet the song has been almost entirely forgotten in terms of recurrent radio play. Radio seems to like to keep artists in their proper career lanes, so songs that go against type tend to be memory-holed when the artist becomes a legacy act. I always thought “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” went to #1 and am surprised to see it fell short. I might be the only person for whom that song elicits a shrug, but it was certainly the song from “Down the Road I Go” that is best remembered. Hell, even “Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde” gets substantially more recurrent radio play than “Best of Intentions” on the stations I’ve listened to, again because it leans into Tritt’s lane.
Grade: B+
I love the lyrics and unusual song structure. I just feel this song is way too muted in sound and lacks the intensity of “Anymore” or “Foolish Pride”. It’s like after he lost Gregg Brown as his producer, he became unable to do the bigger ballads anymore.
I’m shocked It’s a Great Day to Be Alive didn’t hit #1. One of the best parts of the late 90s, early 2000s was the prominence of Darrell Scott as a songwriter (You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive, Born to Fly, Long Time Gone, and this one, among others). This was a nice comeback for Tritt.
If I recall correctly, something like three different songs managed to block “Great Day” from going to #1. They just kept jumping over him.
Same thing happened to “Run” by George Strait.
Other Darrell Scott songs from this period I enjoy are “Heartbreak Town” by the Chicks and “Someday” by Trace Adkins.
This is one of my most favorite Travis Tritt ballads and one of my overall favorites of his. I really love the honesty and vulnerability of the lyrics that bring a likeable, underdog charm combined with the very pretty melody. This is the side of Travis Tritt I’ve always loved the most despite him being known for his masculine outlaw image and persona and more rocking style. While I also enjoy his more “power ballad” type of slow songs like “Anymore” and “Can I Trust You With My Heart,” his more quiet and gentler ones like this, “More Than You’ll Ever Know” and “If I Lost You” tend to be my most favorites. “Best Of Intentions” is also perfectly produced and executed, imho. I’ve always especially loved how the choruses sounded with Tritt’s soaring, emotional vocals blending well with the harmony vocalists, the drums, and steel guitar. I also like how quiet and gentle the intro, instrumental break, and outro is with soft acoustic guitar and piano, plus more lovely steel playing from Dan Dugmore during the verses.
I really loved this song the first couple times I heard it in the late summer of 2000, and it remained a favorite of mine to hear all throughout the Fall later in the year, which was the perfect season for it, imo. This is also another one of my favorite “night time” songs that reminds me of us passing through the Maryland interstates at night during Pennsylvania trips in late 2000 and the pretty sight of lights from other cars and the office buildings lit up. I do remember it had been quite a while since I’d heard from Travis (the last one I’d heard from him was late 1998/early 1999’s “If I Lost You”), and similar to fellow masculine 90s country star, Aaron Tippin, it was pretty neat to see him suddenly making a very successful comeback. And with it being such a pretty tender, honest, and vulnerable record like “Best Of Intentions” it was very easy to root for him. Luckily for us, this one did remain a recurrent hit on the radio during the middle of the decade too, and it was always a bright spot during a time when I was growing more frustrated with mainstream country. I remember hearing it around 2004-2005ish and already thinking that country was straying too far from songs like this. Even more so today, I wish we could still be getting more songs like this in mainstream country, especially from male artists.
Tritt’s big early 2000s comeback is very impressive when not only considering how long he had been in the business by then, but also the fact that mainstream country in general was going though a much slicker, softer, pop influenced era that didn’t have as much in common with the new traditionalist era that he successfully started his career in and wasn’t as receptive to country rock/southern rock influenced styles (It’s equally impressive that southern rockers, Montgomery Gentry, successfully broke through during this time). As MarkMinnesota said though, it probably helped a lot that he mostly picked the right songs and singles to be successful during this time. “It’s A Great Day To Be Alive” is another cheerful, positive feel good song that fits the happier pre-9/11 part of the early 2000s very well, and it’s another one of my favorites. That song was EVERYWHERE in 2001, and it remained another strong recurrent on the radio, so it’s also a shock to me that it wasn’t a number one. I even remember a live performance video of the song being popular at Potomac Mills Mall in Woodbridge, VA when they still showed music videos (and other forms of entertainment) on TV monitors hanging from the ceiling all throughout the mall. “Love Of A Woman” is another favorite Travis Tritt ballad of mine that brings back great memories from when my parents and I saw the movie Bandits (2001) starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett. And speaking of Billy Bob, I thought it was so cool and such a neat coincidence at the time when I heard that he was going to star in the music video for Tritt’s following single, 2002’s “Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde.”
I also really enjoy the two records he released in the early 2000s, Down The Road I Go (2000) and Strong Enough (2002), and I love the production by Billy Joe Walker, Jr. and Travis on them. For more quiet, understated ballads from Tritt, I really enjoy the Dean Dillon penned “I Don’t Ever Want Her To Feel That Way Again” from Strong Enough, and “Just Too Tired To Fight It” from Down The Road I Go.
Finally, MarkMinnesota brings up another interesting point about radio tending to ignore singles that don’t fit the “character” or “lane” that radio seems to prefer from certain artists these days, especially ones known for having a more macho or “fun” persona. For me this can also apply to a lot of Toby Keith’s ballads from the 90s, which were seldom heard on our stations anymore after he embraced his more masculine side in the mid 2000s. “Who’s That Man” is only one of his softer 90s songs that I remember still getting recurrent airplay during that time. All of the Dream Walkin’ and Blue Moon singles might as well had not existed anymore (which was a shame, since those are two of my favorite eras of his) and even early 2000s ballads like “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This” and “My List” were rare recurrents by then. This also applies to Joe Diffie with better chances of hearing “Pickup Man,” “Third Rock From The Sun,” and “Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox” on the radio, but none of the ballads. Same with Alan Jackson in a way, since a lot of people seem to recognize him as mostly the fun loving “Chattahoochee,” “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere,” and “Good Time” guy, while a lot of his 90s ballads and more straight ahead country songs from that time also rarely get played on the radio now, and so on. I always find this to be a shame because a lot of great songs tend to become forgotten by many, as a result.
There was very little that Travis Tritt released that I didn’t like, and I am rather chagrinned to realize that his last #1 record occurred 25 years ago. He does fall within the usual pattern – once he turned 40 radio was largely through with him.
I’ve been listening to alot of the Prime Country channel on Sirius XM–which covers the eighties and nineties–and two artists that I thought were perfectly fine but who
I’ve now developed a greater appreciation for are Clint Black and
Travis Tritt. Neither quite achieved the commercial longevity that fellow ’89ers Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson did, but looking back now, man were they two of the most singular, original voices on the scene. Didn’t love everything they put out–Black especially lost the plot around the One Emotion record–but I’d say now both are pretty underrated in the scheme of things. And while I quite liked and still like Best of Intentions, it doesn’t hit the heady heights of Anymore or Tell Me I Was Dreaming.
I adore this song and remember how Tritt slowly came to be realized as the strongest vocalist of his generation. He consistently produced great singles as part of a run of equally interesting and consistently strong albums.
I would never have identified this as his final number one hit.
I found a Bob Allen review of Travis Tritt’s 1989 debut album “Country Club” in the July/August issue of “Country Music.” In it Allen said, “Mind you, Tritt’s not the world’s greatest singer. He’s more a Joe Stampley than a George Jones;he’s got way more low-moaning Southern soul, spunk, and grit then he does vocal range , and he’s still just a trifle wet-behind-the-ears as a songwriter.”