“My List”
Toby Keith
Written by Rand Bishop and Tim James
Radio & Records
#1 (4 weeks)
April 12 – May 3, 2002
Billboard
#1 (5 weeks)
April 20 – May 18, 2002
When Toby Keith stood on the CMA stage to accept his Male Vocalist of the Year award, it was finally the right place and the right time for a generational talent who spent far too long on the B-list.
Following two cheeky uptempo hits with one of his best ballads, Keith just felt perfectly of the moment during the Pull My Chain album cycle, injecting some much needed masculinity into the genre that was confident and playful, but grounded in gratitude.
I think that’s the secret sauce that was lost over time in mainstream country music: a sense of gratitude, which is a prerequisite for kindness and inclusivity. Its relative absence in recent years has made the genre feel small and insular.
Keith will be the avatar of that change in many ways, starting with his next single. Like Haggard before him, he’d remain more sophisticated and empathetic than the acolytes who’d be hung around his neck as part of his legacy. But for better or for worse, he’ll be defined by what comes after “My List.”
But we capture a moment here, a collective breath between 9/11 and our response to it, that reflects the very best of who we hope we’ll be when times get tough. It also captures a Hall of Fame talent at his creative peak.
“My List” gets an A.
Every No. 1 Single of the 2000s
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A good song but not his best work. I give this one a “B”.
A very good song – I would give it a B+
I was a starving small-town newspaper journalist in 2002, thrust into the very field of work I vowed to avoid after college. My long-time characterization of the job: the stress load of an air traffic controller with the pay of McDonald’s. There was no CMT beaming out of my antenna-only TV airwaves in those years, meaning I hadn’t watched the video for “My List” until yesterday. I always figured the song’s success was mostly connected to audiences’ loose association of its lyrics to post-9/11 emotional reckoning, but I didn’t realize the video directly marketed the connection. I won’t go so far as to say it was exploitation, but it does make me wonder if “My List” would have been selected as the third single from my “Pull My Chain” if 9/11 had never happened.
There’s virtue in quiet introspection and milquetoast epiphanies, but for a master songwriter like Toby Keith, adding “take a little walk and say a little prayer” to your “list of things to do today” is about as slight as it gets. I’m sure the song’s defenders would argue that that is the point, but as the song progressed, I kept waiting for the revelation of a more profound insight that never came. The fact that “My List” ended up being Radio and Records’ most-played song for 2002 really drove home what a disappointment 2002 was in country music compared to the year that preceded it. It was all just so predictable….and flatly delivered.
Grade: C
I never found this song trite or cliche. I think it helps that the delivery is so mellow and uses that unusual instrument opening, which I think may be a sitar or something synthesizing it.
I love the little details like “under an old brass paperweight”, and the clever concept of a to-do list being spun off into the joys of life. I’m fine with some of them being a bit more basic because they’re mixed in with more specifics. This is just such a smooth mature song.
Also, as a side note: when I dug into research for this song, I found out that co-writer Rand Bishop is openly bisexual and has written a lot of articles on Medium about queer musicians. Good stuff. https://randbishop.medium.com/
Not your usual TK song but he makes it his own. Love the song and the style.
Another A for me.
When Toby died last year, this was the first song of his I played. Argue if you want that it’s cliche, but I know for a fact I need this reminder often in life. Slowing down, remembering what is important, and prioritizing those moments. This is the Toby Keith song that touches me more than any others, mainly due to how much I resonate it.