“It Ain’t Cool to Be Crazy About You”
George Strait
Written by Dean Dillon and Royce Porter
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
November 7, 1986
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
December 6, 1986
Dean Dillon’s idiosyncratic songwriting matched so perfectly with George Strait’s sophisticated delivery that it’s impossible to imagine hits like “It Ain’t Cool to Be Crazy About You” being sung by anyone else.
Strait was able to deliver a potentially awkward lyric so that it rolled right off of his tongue, while heightening the emotion of the lyric through his choices in phrasing. I especially love the wry deliver of “it ain’t suave or debonair,” where he hits a slightly higher note on the final word that emphasizes the contradiction here. He’s singing about coolness from a very uncool perspective, and he does it in a way that shows familiarity with being cool, suggesting that he was quite suave or debonair before he got his heart trampled on.
It’s really hard to fault anything about this record. That would be more crazy than cool, don’t you think?
‘It Ain’t Cool to Be Crazy About You” gets an A.
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This particular song is actually easy to imagine being sung by someone else because Kenny Chesney recorded a cover of it in 2007 that give the lyrics a more melancholy feel.
I like the acoustic arrangement Chesney used, though to my ears, his vocal is a carbon copy of George Strait’s original.
…defining bro-country? you won’t find “suave” and “debonair” in those lyrics.
the high waist jeans look that the king is sporting on that smaller picture above, didn’t really catch on, did it? i wonder why.
First Randy Travis talked about “exhuming” things. Now George Strait uses “suave” and “debonair?”
What is going on lyrically with this high-toned new traditionalists?
Keep it down to earth for the earthy, boys!
I love the sound and feel of this song. George Strait took off for me as a superstar with his previous number one single and this one.
Pure country gold from the “#7” album.