On this day in 1990, George Strait’s “Love Without End, Amen” topped the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. It would retain the No. 1 position for five weeks, a feat that hadn’t been accomplished in nearly two decades. It was the biggest hit of the Texas native’s career, and the beginning of his reign over the country charts throughout the 1990s.
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While Strait is widely regarded as one of the faces of country music from the 1990s, he was nearly a decade into his career when the decade began. He had already released nine albums and notched 18 No. 1 singles before he released “Love Without End, Amen” as the lead single from Livin’ It Up in April 1990.
“Love Without End, Amen” wasn’t just Strait’s first single of the 1990s and his biggest career hit. It was also the first single to top the Hot Country Songs Chart in 13 years. The last song to spend that long atop the chart was Dolly Parton’s 1977 single “Here You Come Again.”
The Story Behind George Strait’s Record-Breaking Hit
“Love Without End, Amen” is a song about the unconditional love a dad has for his son. Songwriter Aaron Barker wrote the song after an intense conversation with his 16-year-old son. He had just gotten his first car, and Barker had put rules in place: he limited where his son could go and who he could be with in the car. That night, he broke both of those rules. While doing so, he hit a curb, the wheel came off his car, and damaged a brand-new Porsche.
“First of all, my son was born when I was 17. I was a kid, too,” Barker recalled. “I saw him in the hospital and thought this will be great, we’ll grow up together,” he added. “That was the night that it really came to the reality that I had to be the dad, and I couldn’t just be his friend.”
After his son went to bed, Barker did some soul searching. “The question was, how can you be that mad at somebody and still love them that much. Where does that ability come from? It’s in us all. So, I got my guitar and I was playing and praying and looking for the answer,” he recalled. “The song was the answer,” Barker said. “That’s the way God loves us. That’s why it’s in us all the time, we’re born with it.”
“To have a story I wrote about my son have a messenger like George Strait pick it up and sing it, how great is that?”
Featured Image by Tammie Arroyo/Shutterstock
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