“(Do You Love Me) Just Say Yes”
Highway 101
Written by Bob DiPiero, Dennis Robbins, and John Scott Sherrill
Radio & Records
#1 (2 weeks)
August 5 – August 12, 1988
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
September 10, 1988
By the time Pam Tillis released “Do You Know Where Your Man Is” in 1993, it had already been recorded by Barbara Mandrell and Melba Montgomery in 1990 and 1992. Earlier this year, Gen Xers on Instagram were having a field day with those old “Do you know where your children are?” ads, joking that our parents had to be reminded by celebrities and newscasters to check if we were home and alive before they went to bed themselves.
The Tillis record still slaps, but I do wonder how many listeners get the song’s reference now. It’s been even longer since “Just Say No!” totally ended the war on drugs, thanks to Nancy Reagan and Arnold Drummond. It was enough of a pop culture moment that country music could still build a song around it years later, and Highway 101 does a great job with it. The coolest part of the record is the extended intro, which is a rarity for country radio singles. The harmonies on the chorus are another highlight.
It still feels like a slight step down from the singles off their debut album, and indeed, it would be the only chart-topper from their sophomore set. Highway 101’s final No. 1 single straddled the decades, topping Radio & Records in 1989 and Billboard in 1990. We covered it in the nineties feature, and will fold it into the eighties timeline when the decade wraps up.
“(Do You Love Me) Just Say Yes” gets a B+.
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Some decent instrumentation notwithstanding, this one doesn’t do much for me. It’s gotten very little recurrent play since I was in elementary school so my familiarity was almost nonexistent. I didn’t pick up on the likely contrast with Nancy Reagan’s advice but I suppose there’s a good chance the title was lifted and then inverted. My biggest takeaway was the aggressive persistence of the female narrator which occasionally bordered on creepiness, albeit in the playful way that Eddy Raven was warning “I’m Gonna Get You” rather than the way Glenn Close was pursuing Michael Douglas in a movie that came out around the time this song was a hit.
Grade: C
Sometimes people don’t know when they have it made. Paulette Carlson has an unusual voice that needs to be framed properly in order to be appealing. I have several of her pre-Highway 101 singles and two of the post-Highway 101 CDs and none of them are compelling listening. I do not know if Highway 101 would have been more successful had she stayed with them (radio already was tiring of them – the last single for Carlson reached #14, the same chart rank as her successor’s (Nikki Nelson) first single with the group.
Something about the pleading rise of Larsen singing “Come on! It’s on the tip of your tongue!” Still absolutely slays me today.
The band’s name was apparently inspired by a Minnesota state highway that runs near Winstead, Minnesota. Given the heavy influence of California country on the band’s sound it is not surprising that there is also a US highway 101 in California that runs from Los Angeles to Tumwater, Washington.
Much like The Desert Rose Band, this quartet mined a vein of country music that seemed theirs alone.
I love this bright and punchy single.