Podcast - Album Deep Dive: Wish You Were Here by Mark Wills
During a seismic sales boom in the late '90s, Mark Wills released one of the most successful albums from that era. Wish You Were Here spawned multiple top ten singles including the acclaimed "Don't Laugh at Me," which created a generational impact. This podcast outlines the state of country music in 1998, takes you back to the top hits playing on country radio at the time, includes interviews from the making of this record, and highlights historical moments from the album.
Show Notes
Mark Wills’ Wish You Were Here album was released in 1998 and in 2023 it turns 25! In this episode, we are diving deep into this record. It’s one of my favorites and it was such an important part of the country music scene in the late 90s – I want to remember the success and impact that it had.
Let’s set the scene.
“Places I've Never Been” from Mark Wills peaked at number five in June of 1997 – it was his second top ten hit. He’s signed to Mercury Records and the label had Kathy Mattea with “455 Rocket” which was a top 25 hit and even bigger video success - it was named the Video of the Year by the CMAs that year. Sammy Kershaw was releasing some of his best work; “Love of My Life” was the 10th most played song of 97. Billy Ray Cyrus saw his highest chart success in several years with “It's All the Same to Me.” Toby Keith was continuing his stride at radio with his Dream Walkin’ record. Terri Clark was ruling radio so fast that she recorded a sophomore album not even a year after her platinum debut was released to meet the consumer demand. The label's biggest act, Shania Twain was on the verge of releasing Come On Over in September of 1997.
The label also had John and Audrey Wiggins, who were set to release their second album on the label after some minor success of their first single. Then there’s Wesley Dennis, Kim Richey, and Mark Wills, who all released their first albums on Mercury around 95 and 96.
The mid-90s boom of new acts was already starting to wear in 1998. Many of those artists weren't profitable for their record labels anymore so we saw a lot of changes. One or two minor singles weren’t cutting it, and everyone was competing for a slot on country radio.
You really had to stand out and be visible, and we were starting to see an artist's image play a larger role within their career. You could no longer just put a cowboy hat on and try to be George Strait - you may have gotten by with that in 1994, but now was the time to separate yourself from the crowd, because sure, you can play the county fair circuit on a handful of hits, but if you wanted to develop some longevity, you had to have substantial songs.
With Mark Wills' second album Wish You Were Here, that's what we got - an album with no filler. It's a great balance of ballads, up-tempo, and radio-ready songs. When you look at the songwriters on this album, there were some very established writers and some people like future hitmaker Rodney Atkins and writer Lee Thomas Miller who were on the brink of very successful careers.
The first single off the record was “I Do (Cherish You).” Keith Stegall and Dan Hill wrote this. Dan Hill was primarily known for pop music and writing songs that Celine Dion recorded. I mentioned Sammy Kershaw's “Love of My life” earlier and both Keith Stegall and Dan Hill wrote that as well. Keith Stegall was a bit hesitant about pitching his songs to artists he was producing on Mercury, but label head Luke Lewis encouraged him to do so.
“I Do (Cherish You)” hits radio and debuts at number 59 the last week of February 1998. Only two other brand-new songs on the charts premiered higher - The Lynn's “Woman to Woman” at #56 and Faith Hill's “This Kiss” at #41. The video is also added to CMT at this time.
A CD single was released for the song and it remained active on the charts for most of the year. Something people tend to forget - Mark Wills recorded “I Do (Cherish You) before pop band 98 Degrees did - their version wouldn't be released for another year.
When it came to the release of his second album, Mercury records created a strategy that focused on a slow burn. This wasn't something Mercury typically did - they usually didn't leave much time in between the lead single and album release dates.
The album was released on May 5 - a day that saw two major stars battle it out for the top spot on the charts.
Garth Brooks' first (but certainly not last) boxed set The Limited Series, a collection of previous albums, debuted at number one with 372,000 copies sold. LeAnn Rimes' Sittin’ on Top of the World would land at number two with 156,000 copies. John Michael Montgomery had a new album out; Leave A Mark was at #15 with 16,000 copies and Wish You Were Here from Mark Wills debuted at number 25 with 6,500 copies sold.
Mercury label rep John Grady said in an interview with Billboard:
"We were very hard on image this time as you can see from the photos and the video for the single. It's sort of a makeover. He has a lot of young fans and we're trying to go at that audience with a current image is sort of a soap-opera style, because he's really a handsome young guy.”
I always forget just how young he was - he was 24 but his voice and song selection were far more mature than that.
The song “I Do (Cherish You)” makes a steady climb on the Billboard airplay charts and reached its peak on June 27, 1998. George Strait had spent 3 weeks occupied at number one with “I Just Want to Dance with You.” Then, the Reba and Brooks and Dunn duet “If You See Him, If You See Her,” took over blocking “I Do (Cherish You) from the top.
Listen to how ballad-heavy country radio was at during this week. Super heavy for a genre that is known for its feel-good summer fun songs.
“If You See Him, If You See Her” - Reba and Brooks & Dunn
“I Do (Cherish You)” - Mark Wills
“I Just Want to Dance with You” - George Strait
“Commitment” - LeAnn Rimes
“The Shoes You're Wearing” - Clint Black
“That's Why I'm Here” - Kenny Chesney
“It Would Be You” - Gary Allan
"I Can Still Feel You” - Collin Raye
"One Of These Days” - Tim McGraw
“A Man Holdin’ On (to a Woman Lettin’ Go)” - Ty Herndon
That’s the top ten, now here’s the songs just outside of it:
11. "Now That I’ve Found You” - Terri Clark
12. "To Make You Feel My Love” - Garth Brooks
13. "From This Moment On” - Shania Twain (featuring Bryan White)
There are like four or five wedding staples to this day in that group of songs!
“I Do (Cherish You)” has a slow descend and it's still in the top twenty when the follow-up single "Don't Laugh at Me" is released in mid-July.
Don’t Laugh At Me
"Don't Laugh at Me.” This song.... you can have hits, moments in pop culture, awards...but this song changed lives. And it's every bit as important as it was 25 years ago.
If you've ever seen Mark Wills in concert, the pinnacle of the show is the moment he plays this song.
In a 1998 interview Mark told Billboard that "Don't Laugh at Me" is “a song that every artist looks for and very few ever get. And I feel it opens a few doors for me and maybe for other people, too who haven't been open to real-life situations."
"Don't Laugh at Me" climbs the chart fast and propels his album to the top ten for the very first time in September of 1998.
It was common for labels to release commercial singles that you could find at the record store that just had the artists current single and a B-side, but they opted not to do that with “Don't Laugh At Me” which was a great move because this song enabled the album to sell over 10,000 each week steadily through the late summer of 98.
The response to the song made it even more impactful.
Mark told Billboard Magazine that:
"We get standing ovations on it. People in the front row are standing up and crying. That's a great feeling - when you can do a song with that much power in it. When you look out in the crowd and see people in age ranging from 9 to 75 that are standing there looking at you and crying.
If you could only read all the email I'm getting about this, all the cards, all the letters, if you could hear all the phone calls I've gotten about this song, it would blow your mind. This song has surpassed all expectations of fan reaction. I Had no idea it would do what it's doing."
The song is climbing fast up the chart and in mid-August “I Do (Cherish You)” was on the charts for its final week, sitting at #29, and then "Don't Laugh at Me" was at #31, so the radio promotion was really just perfect. Nowadays, artists are lucky if they get one song to climb to its peak within a year, and what I'm seeing is that those songs can be completely ditched. There are songs by super popular artists right now that radio just doesn't give second thought to once they've peaked. And that's the difference between artists of today - they aren't getting the opportunity with radio to build a career - you must have a catalog to make a career out of touring.
In the fall of 1998, Mark Wills had the opportunity to perform a snippet of “I Do (Cherish You)” at the CMA Awards, giving his album sales another boost. It also helps big time with an artist's image. Back in the late 90s we had CMT/TNN and Country Weekly, and the annual award shows. It's not like today when there are all these social media platforms where you know EVERYTHING about an artist.
Like “I Do (Cherish You),” "Don't Laugh at Me" also peaks at number 2 on the airplay charts. This occurs in late October and Tim McGraw is ruling the charts with "Where the Green Grass Grows" for multiple weeks. The title track “Wish You Were Here” was released that same month and soon the album would be certified Gold for sales of 500,000.
As the year wraps up, this is where Mark Wills lands on the year-end Billboard Charts in 1998:
Top Country Male Artist - #10
Top Country Artists - #19
Top Country Album – Wish You Were Here - #30
Top Country Album Artists - #28
Hot Country Singles and Tracks Artist - #16
Hot Country Singles
“I Do (Cherish You)” - #16
"Don't Laugh at Me" - #26
Top Country Singles Sales - “I Do (Cherish You)” - #18
After a banner year in 1998, industry insiders see Mark Wills as a strong contender for waving the country music flag. Quality output combined with a dream run at radio and sales that continue to propel, Mark Wills is seeing his name mentioned with Kenny Chesney, Lonestar, Lee Ann Womack, and Toby Keith as artists that are setting themselves up for a successful future.
Making the move from newcomer to a reliable artist that can sell records and concert tickets is not something a lot of artists from the 90s can say. And all those artists I just mentioned - Lee Ann Womack, Lonestar, Toby, and Kenny along with Mark to this day can all make a living from touring, granted Kenny is on a level that not many artists will ever experience, but these are artists that sell out venues and are recognized by generations of country fans. For me, those specific acts I mentioned are not nostalgia acts, they are all putting out great records, whether radio plays them or not, but fans are still responding to them.
Country music fans are dedicated, and they will support you for decades, but I don't think people fully grasp how important some of these artists were to the genre. And especially just how successful they were in their major-label days.
This brings us to the first week of May in 1999, a huge week for Mark Wills.
On May 3, the Academy of Country Music Awards are held in California. Mark Wills wins the Top New Male Vocalist edging out David Kersh and Derryl Dodd. He gives a memorable speech; he's also nominated for Song of the Year with “Don't Laugh at Me” but loses to Steve Wariner's “Holes in the Floor of Heaven.”
With the performance slot on the ACMs and the big win, Mark Wills sells 10,000 copies of his Wish You Were Here album that week. The album has been on the charts for a year at this point and is still selling strongly.
He's got the award, has some major sales...and then.... that same week...Mark Wills tops the Billboard airplay chart for the very first time in his career when his third single and title track "Wish You Were Here" reaches number one.
This is the song that finally knocks Kenny Chesney's 5-week number one "How Forever Feels" off the top. Then, Tim McGraw would take Mark Wills spot for 5 weeks with “Please Remember Me.” 1999 was a big year for multi-week number ones, so nabbing a spot at the top was quite a feat.
Again, Mark Wills delivers with a ballad that is just one of those perfect story songs. And it's no surprise that the writers are two of Nashville's best - Skip Ewing and Bill Anderson.
I had the chance to talk with the legendary Bill Anderson about his songwriting success in the 90s and he told me:
“It was exciting for me because the co-writing thing was so new for me, and it was fun to wake up in the morning and say, ‘so-and-so called and wants to write with me.’ Or I call so-and-so and say, ‘Would you like to try and write?’
It was kinda like Christmas everyday writing with all these different people, and they were having so much success. I had been away from writing for ten years or so, and when I started back, it was like it was all brand new again. “
In the summer of 1999, Mark Wills was invited to be a part of George Strait's massive stadium tour – the first country tour to ever play NFL stadiums. This lineup is just so unreal. George Strait, Tim McGraw, The Chicks, Jo Dee Messina, Kenny Chesney, Mark Wills, and Asleep at the Wheel.
Mark had just won the ACM New Male, Jo Dee took the Top New Female, The Chicks were both the Top New Group and overall Top Group, and Tim McGraw had just won Top Male Vocalist. Between all the acts on the lineup, they spent 27 weeks at number one that year ALONE.
Naturally with that lineup, it would be the top-grossing tour of the year.
She’s In Love
The fourth and final single from the Wish You Were Here album, "She's in Love" debuted on the charts in mid-June of 1999. It would peak at #7 in November.
This is my absolute favorite song off the album - my favorite song in country music from 1999. I don't even know if I can explain what it is about that song. It's really everything about that song - the story, the production...I'm a big McBride and the Ride fan and I think there's something in this song that reminds me of their style - the mid-tempo, background vocals, kind of things like "Going Out of My Mind" or "Just One Night" where you just feel everything in those lyrics.
"She's In Love" is so captivating and I've talked to other people like me who correlate songs to the time of the year it was released. To me when I hear "She's in Love" - I'm back to the fall of 1999 instantly. And I was 9 then. And as you get older, your musical tastes change...but I've never outgrown "She's in Love" - I will never tire of listening to it. And I know I'm not alone in loving that song - I know so many people in radio and country music that will tell you that "She's in Love" is their favorite song in Mark Wills’ catalog.
Where I live, I am a part of a committee that selects performances for our local arts center. I remember going to our meeting back in 2021 and being like, "I promise you guys, if we got Mark Wills to perform here, it would be a concert that everyone would rave about." And so we did. And Mark performed in Jasper, Indiana, in the fall of 2021, and to this day we still get people who call into my radio station and talk about what a good show that was. And our arts center has a ton of season ticket holders, so there are many people who attend the show just because have they have tickets, not necessarily because they know the artist. And the people who were unfamiliar, and supposedly "were not fans of country" were blown away.
During that show Mark asked if anyone wanted to hear anything specific and someone said, "She's in Love" and he mentioned that just the night before they added it back to their setlist and performed it for the first time in a while. And he performed it again that night in Jasper and it was flawless.
That song has gone from being on the mixed cassette tapes I made as a kid, to my burnt CDs in high school, and now it's a constant on my Spotify playlists. And that concludes my Ted Talk on why “She's in Love” is underrated and the best song of 99.
“She's In Love” didn't get the long descend like the previous singles had, and I don't know if the rush to get a new album was the reason, but it's probably likely. “She's in Love” fell from the top ten the same week that "Back at One" started to get airplay. It's obviously a great problem to have - the demand for more music. And I'm sure the label wanted to capitalize and follow up with a new album since Wish You Were Here was almost 2 years old.
Mark Wills received three nominations for the 1999 CMA Awards – Song, Single, and Music Video of the Year. Song of the Year went to the writers of “This Kiss” - which the voters probably chose that because they used so many big words and phrases like “centrifugal motion.” I have other opinions on what song should’ve won.
It did, however, win the NSAI which is the Nashville Songwriter Association International and the Music Row Magazine Song of the Year in 1999.
By the end of 1999, Mark Wills was the sixth most-played Top Country Male Artist and fourteenth country artist overall.
Here’s where he ranked that year:
Top Country Album – Wish You Were Here - #16
Hot Country Singles and Tracks
“Wish You Were Here” - #15
“She's In Love” - #50
Hot Country Singles and Tracks Artist - #10
Top Country Album Artists - #17
All-Genre Hot 100 Singles Artist - #71
And let’s take a moment to look at the Top Country Albums of 1999 – there are some genre-defining records in here.
Come On Over – Shania Twain
Double Live – Garth Brooks
Wide Open Spaces – The Chicks
A Place in the Sun – Tim McGraw
Fly – The Chicks
Faith – Faith Hill
I’m Alright – Jo Dee Messina
Lonely Grill – Lonestar
Hope Floats Soundtrack – Various Artists
Always Never the Same – George Strait
Touched By an Angel – The Soundtrack – Various Artists
For The Record: 41 Number One Hits – Alabama
Everywhere We Go – Kenny Chesney
High Mileage – Alan Jackson
Evolution – Martina Mcbride
Wish You Were Here – Mark Wills
Everywhere – Tim Mcgraw
Greatest Hits Volume One – Toby Keith
If You See Her – Brooks & Dunn
The Key – Vince Gill
That’s an impressive list!
Wish You Were Here would hang on the charts into the new millennium, eventually going platinum. When it comes to singles, I think the right songs were released as singles. But when you listen to the album, every song could've been a hit. Obviously, the label released a lot of ballads - I mean several in a row spanning a few albums.
“Emily Harper” would've been a great radio single - but was it too similar to “Jacob's Ladder” with its young love theme? I can see that. "It's Working" would've been a great radio friendly song for that era. There are three other songs that I think could've just been mainstays in the 90s: “The Last Memory,” “Help Me Fall,” and “Anywhere but Memphis.” If you want an album that still holds up today in terms of quality songwriting, vocals, and production, this is it. It stands the test of time.
For me, this album has been with me throughout the majority of my life - I actually got the CD from the Columbia House Music Club buy 12 for 1 – or you think you do - and if you were a kid during those glory days, you know what it was like to sign up and your parents get the bill and you get in trouble because now they want to charge you all this money every month. So, if you survived the Columbia House Music Club, congrats.
Go buy it or download it - revisit it it's been a minute - and tell me your favorite tracks - you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.