Months after people around her said it was time to quit, Jo Dee Messina became the first female country artist to score three consecutive multi week No. 1 singles from the same album, a stunning comeback run that saved a career nearly lost to radio silence and mounting bills.
She had almost no income and tons of bills with her car and home at risk.
At the end of 1997 Jo Dee Messina had no song on the radio, almost no income and a pile of bills. People around her were saying it was time to quit, yet she refused.
A Promising Debut That Nearly Became Her Ceiling
Her career had started well enough that few expected her to be fighting for survival so quickly. After moving from Massachusetts to Nashville she spent years chasing a deal before landing at Curb Records.
Tim McGraw and Byron Gallimore co produced her 1996 debut. The first two singles worked with “Heads Carolina, Tails California” reaching No. 2 while “You’re Not in Kansas Anymore” made the Top 10. Messina played more than 200 shows that year and the album eventually went gold.
Then the momentum vanished. The next two singles missed the Top 40. Messina went roughly a year without a song on country radio, touring slowed and management and financial problems piled up.
The Historic Run That Changed Everything
Messina returned to the studio with Gallimore and McGraw for her second album. The first single “Bye Bye” went to No. 1. Then Phil Vassar’s “I’m Alright” did the same. Then “Stand Beside Me” reached No. 1 and stayed there for three weeks.
That run made her a history maker and I’m Alright eventually sold more than two million copies in the United States.
The album kept producing hits. Her version of Dottie West’s “Lesson in Leavin’” reached No. 2 while “Because You Love Me” made the Top 10.
A Comeback That Carried Into Burn
The comeback carried into her next album Burn, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s country albums chart. Its lead single “That’s the Way” spent four weeks at No. 1 and crossed into the pop Top 40.
What I’m Alright changed was not simply her chart position.
It established the run that would define her peak years and proved that the promising debut had not been the ceiling of her career. The second album became the record that turned Jo Dee Messina from a new artist with an uncertain future into one of country music’s most reliable hitmakers of the late 1990s.