Twenty-five years ago, Lee Ann Womack‘s career-defining song “I Hope You Dance” was a No. 1 hit on country radio.
“It made me think about my daughters and the different times in their lives,” Womack told Billboard. “But it can be so many things to different people. Certainly, it can represent everything a parent hopes for their child, but it can also be for a relationship that’s ending as a fond wish for the other person’s happiness or for someone graduating, having a baby, or embarking on a new path. It fits almost every circumstance I can think of.”
“I Hope You Dance” is the title track and lead single from Womack’s I Hope You Dance album, which she released in 2000. The sentimental ballad topped both Billboard’s Hot Country Singles & Tracks and Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks charts and reached number fourteen on the Billboard Hot 100.
“I Hope You Dance” was named the Country Music Association’s Single of the Year and won Song of the Year from the Academy of Country Music, Nashville Songwriters Association International, and Broadcast Music Incorporated. The Grammys named it Best Country Song. The song is double platinum in digital and retail sales.
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Tia Sillers and Mark D. Sanders Co-wrote “I Hope You Dance”
Tia Sillers and Mark D. Sanders co-wrote the song about hope, resilience and engaging in life. However, when they wrote it, the song was more of a prayer for the future than a reflection of the present for Sillers. She told Songwriter Universe she was going through a brutal divorce. The songwriter wanted an escape, so she went to the Florida Gulf Coast.
“Sitting on the beach and reflecting about the break-up, I felt so small and inconsequential,” Sillers said. “But out of this difficult time came the inspiration to write ‘I Hope You Dance.’ As I was leaving the beach, I remember thinking that things weren’t really so bad, that I would get through it. That’s when I came up with the line, ‘I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.’”
When Sillers met with Sanders to write the next week, she brought the ‘ocean’ inspiration with her.
“It was still an emotional time for me,” she said. “I alternately cried and babbled during the writing session. But Mark made everything better; he was great to work with. We wrote the song very quickly, finishing the song in just a day or two.”
Lee Ann Womack Recorded “I Hope You Dance” Immediately
The pair made a demo for “I Hope You Dance,” and Sillers’ publishers Pat Finch (Vice President) and Curtis Green (Sr. Creative Director) of Famous Music, played it for Lee Ann Womack’s producer, Mark Wright. Wright played the song for Womack, and they both loved it. The singer recorded and released it within months of Sillers and Sanders writing it.
“The response to the song was beautiful,” Sillers said. “Someone told me a story, that when great songwriter Matraca Berg was driving and first heard the song on the radio, she pulled off the road because she loved it and said, ‘Thank God.’”
The song’s popularity soared, prompting Nashville book publisher Rutledge Hill Press to ask Sillers and Sanders to write a book themed around “I Hope You Dance.” The book of the same name made the New York Times bestseller list.
“I Hope You Dance” even reached the beloved poet Maya Angelou. Womack told Rolling Stone she wanted to be on Oprah Winfrey’s show. It was a slow process until Angelou told Winfrey about Womack and “I Hope You Dance.”
Maya Angelou Loved “I Hope You Dance”
“Suddenly, all the momentum changed,” Womack said. “We found out it was because Maya Angelou told Oprah about me and the song.”
Womack met Angelou and later performed the song at her funeral.
“I was honored, moved, and thrilled about everything she said to me about the song and my singing,” Womack said. “But all these years later, the song remained? That says so much about the power of music and poetry: the way the human condition can be filtered down in a song. Keeping it real and honest but also maintaining the love in your heart and compassion. That makes for an excellent life, and that’s what I think Maya Angelou found in the song.”
Sellers told Songwriter Universe she could never have anticipated the overwhelming response to “I Hope You Dance.”
“I had no idea things were going to go so well,” she said. “I was going through a divorce, things were difficult, and there was no way of knowing that great things were about to happen.”
(Photo by Ebru Yildiz, Courtesy Shore Fire Media)
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