“I Just Wanna Be Mad”
Terri Clark
Written by Kelley Lovelace and Lee Thomas Miller
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
February 14, 2003
Terri Clark’s comeback smash shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.
As she emerges as the only woman who will have multiple No. 1 hits in the next two years, it’s in the wake of the nineties woman formula completely breaking down.
Clark’s Fearless album was a canary in the coalmine in that sense. It was a huge artistic step forward that still had radio friendly singles, but the album sank quietly at radio and retail.
Clark knew she needed to come back with something big and loud, and it’s to her credit that she did so with one of the best songs about married couples fighting in country music history. (And there are a lot of them.)
The writing is sharp and Clark is both heartfelt and hilarious in her delivery. The in your face fiddle and electric guitar combo rock hard while being more country overall than anything she’d done in years.
What a fantastic record this is. I’m going to savor those words because I’ll be saying them far less frequently as the year progresses.
“I Just Wanna Be Mad” gets an A.
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I Do like the detail in the song and it’s a good performance. I would give it a “B”. Personally I just don’t like the message of the song. I have known too many people that being angry, stubborn, in a sour mood is just part of their daily life and to them it’s minor and no harm. I just can’t be that way. Yes, I understand life cannot be perfect every day, but I will never understand people who are ok with constant arguing and bickering. Maybe this just hit me on the wrong day. lol
I felt really good for Terri Clark that she mounted a comeback after radio turned on her two years earlier at the same time she was showing some genuine artistic promise to be an even better version of herself. She always had an instinct for a good song and chose well again here. I’ve never been married but I could still relate to the scenario here, where a petty squabble escalated into something it never needed to but letting go of the anger too quickly would nonetheless feel disingenuous. It was a clever framing for a song….something that felt fresh and original, coupled with a heartfelt vocal performance and an arrangement with the perfect mix of fiddles and guitar to land in that Terri Clark sweet spot.
Even at the time though, I remember it making me sad because it felt like the final flicker of remaining light from the 90s country ladies candle was being blown out. I was fully behind Terri Clark having a hit with it and give her high marks for the vocal interpretation of the lyrics, but whenever I listen to it, then and now, I find myself superimposing the vocals of disappeared 90s ladies like Pam Tills, Patty Loveless, and Lorrie Morgan and imagining their take on these lyrics. It always feels like they’d hit it out of the park just as Terri Clark did, but alas, they were no longer getting that opportunity on a wide commercial scale.
And of course, the pivot away from my favorite era of country music was a broader theme of this decade. Ironically though, as much as I intuitively grit my teeth about 2003 being the year that the wheels came off the bus in commercial country, revisiting this list is making my tantrum a harder sell than I anticipated. I look ahead on the list of 2003 hits coming soon and see a shocking number of songs I really like. What can I say…..whether it makes sense or not, I just want to be mad for a while!
Grade: A-
I remember my dad really getting a kick out of this song. As a married man, he could relate to it, I guess. I think it’s a great, realistic song.
I didn’t get this song at all until I woke up one morning and heard my mom arguing with her then-boyfriend over the phone.
This is great, but I liked “Three Mississippi” even more and was baffled that one bombed.
I liked Terri Clark in the 90s, but 2000-05 is where most of her best stuff lies. (Except “Girls Lie Too”. I hate that one.) Then she went off a cliff with “Dirty Girl” and just never recovered quality-wise for me. I saw her around 2017-18 and was surprised to find a crowd that knew every word of “Dirty Girl”… as well as a crowd that had Kristen Hall (Sugarland), Bobby Randall (Sawyer Brown, Confederate Railroad), AND Paul Martin (Exile) in it, all in middle of nowhere Michigan.
Also, I’m told this song got the R&R #1 because a few stations briefly backed off playing “19 Somethin'” after the Columbia disaster. I know WKJC’s PD told me they briefly stopped playing the song for that reason.
I was happy to see her get another Number One, but I thought Girls Lie Too was a big misfire for her after years of very solid quality control. Pain to Kill was probably the last album of hers I enjoyed front to back.