“Good Morning Beautiful”
Steve Holy
Written by Todd Cerney and Zack Lyle
Radio & Records
#1 (5 weeks)
January 25 – February 22, 2002
Billboard
#1 (5 weeks)
February 2 – March 2, 2002
Last week, I saw Trisha Yearwood and Kane Brown shows on consecutive nights.
I’m going to write about those shows soon. I thought about them immediately when I got to “Good Morning Beautiful.” You see, Trisha Yearwood closed her show with a majestic encore that I genuinely felt privileged to have been in the room to have heard.
The next voice I heard after that was Ashley Cooke warbling “your place” to a half-filled arena. The poor girl never had a chance.
So here we have Steve Holy, who is very much not a one hit wonder. He was one of those zombie Curb artists who would keep releasing singles for years until another one sticks, and he has another chart-topper five years down the road.
But here he has to follow “Where Were You,” somehow matching the 9/11 memorial’s five weeks at No. 1. Holy also never had a chance, though he acquitted himself well enough with a perfectly fine ballad that has some nice fiddle work to accent his perfectly fine vocal performance.
It’s one of those ballads that was more about getting radio listeners to not turn the radio dial off before the commercial break, rather than giving them a reason to tune in. Ballads like this broke everyone from one hit wonders like James Bonamy to inevitable Hall of Famers like Keith Urban.
But you’re not going to see much of that again moving forward. Not after 9/11 and the God and Country era that eventually devolved into Bro and now Bruh Country. It sounds so quaint today, like a sleepy nursery rhyme spin on “Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.”
What more can I say?
“Good Morning Beautiful” gets a B.
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I think he’d have had something if he stuck with the rowdier Chris Isaak stylings he had on “Don’t Make Me Beg”. Other than Eric Heatherly’s fantastic turbo-charged cover of “Flowers on the Wall”, and much later on Jace Everett’s “Bad Things”, not a lot of country acts were swiping Isaak, but they made damn good songs every time they did.
I used to hate this song, but I think it was a combination of 14-year-old me still getting the last “ew, romance is icky” out of my system and overplay of a merely pleasant and inoffensive song. You can hear how dated Wilbur C. Rimes’ production is at times, especially in the guitar solo, but I think that adds to the charm. I don’t think this would have worked as well with a glossy Dann Huff makeover.
A very nice love song of its time, but with no straying power. Still a nice listen. My grade is “B-“
It’s gonna be hard for me to give this song a fair hearing because of my personal history with it. My girlfriend in 2017 and 2018 used this song as the ringtone of her alarm. Her preference was to set the alarm very early and keep hitting snooze for at least an hour. Every nine minutes every morning, I was awakened anew by the voice of Steve Holy. Needless to say, I’m still recovering from the trauma!
Seriously though, I’m a bit saddened that Steve Holy’s two biggest hits were so unremarkable because he was versatile and a breath of fresh air who deserved better. He could have really been somebody if the center of gravity in the country music universe hadn’t shifted under his feet in the 2000s. “Good Morning Beautiful” is a perfectly serviceable love ballad that made for effective radio fodder but wasn’t the sharpest arrow in Holy’s quiver, which was made perfectly clear to me when my mom purchased his debut CD from the bargain bin a few years after its release. I had enjoyed the rockabilly vibe of “Don’t Make Me Beg” and really loved the silky-smooth “The Hunger” during its run on radio, but I didn’t have high expectations when I popped it in the CD player. I was stunned by how much I loved it. While Holy’s vocals were not on par with Orbison or Malo, he effectively powered through a number of songs that would have been right at home on a 90s Mavericks record as well as thundered through some rockers that sounded like “Man of Me”-era Gary Allan, capturing the vibe of both equally well. Holy kept trying to find his footing in the years to come and continued to make some valiant efforts that mostly went unheard, his legacy reduced to relative mediocrities.
As generally ambivalent as I am to “Good Morning Beautiful”, I’m glad Steve Holy had a hit with it. It was a decent love song put in capable hands.
Grade: B
Are you sure you have the dates right here? I’m pretty sure Steve Holy’s time at #1 was in the early weeks of 2002, not late 2001.
Happens with cloud saves sometimes when I’m working on different devices. I duplicate the old posts for templates so when you see older dates or artwork or blurbs or anything like that, it just means something didn’t save when I switched devices. I appreciate the comments because it’s the flag to go back and fix it. I wouldn’t notice it otherwise.