1998 | Peak: #2
What on earth is a tumee, and why is Tim McGraw trying to pull it?
That was but one of the questions that my younger self had about “One of These Days.” It hit the radio during my freshman year in college. As a transplanted New Yorker studying in Tennessee, I couldn’t understand why my friends were flipping out about how powerful this song was.
I got the hype through the first and second verse, but it lost me in the third act. I actually thought he was getting married. After a few years down south, my Catholic self gradually learned the meaning of this very Baptist song. If this was my life story, I would’ve just gone to confession after these personal failings.
I’ve never been one to make evaluative judgments on denominations and faiths other than my own. If somebody else is taking a different path to God, I hope they have a meaningful journey and that we meet up at a shared destination.
But I will say one thing. If you’re looking to close a three act song with a dramatic resolution, “born again” is the way to go.
Written by Marcus Hummon, Monty Powell, and Kip Raines
Grade: A
Next: Where the Green Grass Grows
Previous: Just to See You Smile
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjdPDuen3g
“Tumee” was precisely my observation when I first heard this song as a teenager. I had a lot of fun pretending it was a euphemism for some part of the female anatomy… only trouble was that I couldn’t decide which part.
I was in college when i first heard this song and I always thought it was some kind of double entendre I couldn’t quite figure out. Because it talks about how at “17 you only want one thing.” So I thought the song was about sex.
I also heard “tumee” not to me, and I also thought that “pulling a tumee” was something sexual.
Not being religious, I had no idea at that time what the verse about the congregation rising up was about.
But then at the end, he sings about how one of these days “I’m gonna love me/And feel the joy of sweet release.” Honest: I always thought he was talking about masturbating to orgasm in that verse. But now I realize the song really isn’t as dirty as I once hoped it was. Kind of a let-down. But the song is still awesome anyway. My name is sweet cheeks and that’s my story.
Not sure I fully believe you, Sweetcheeks, but can’t say I didn’t enjoy reading that comment regardless!
…And now Sweetcheeks’ comment will probably run through my head every time I hear the song from now on.
In reviewing Tim’s album Everywhere for for My Kind of Country last week, I pulled this song out for the first time in a long while. I, too, had a different idea about this than it really was about. I always throught it was a love song. Being in fourth grade in 1998, the self-loathing went over my head.
And Sweetcheeks – I hate when people put sexual references to songs I love. I guess I have no where near as dirty a mind as others. But with him being 17, I can see where yiu’d think that. It does make sense even if I agree with Dan.
which came first – this or “Don’t Laugh at Me”? They struck me as two sides of the same coin.
This song came first. “Don’t Laugh At Me” came out the following year in 1999. I never really picked up on that similarity before, but I think I can see it now that you mention it.