“Lovin’ Only Me”
Ricky Skaggs
Written by Hillary Kanter and Even Stevens
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
June 16, 1989
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
July 8, 1989
Let the record show that Ricky Skaggs could’ve done the nineties country star gig just fine.
“Lovin’ Only Me” sounds like the prototypical Alan Jackson record, with a muscular traditional country sound that marries country’s insistence on being felt with rock’s insistence on being heard. Skaggs navigates the production with ease, turning in a more forceful performance than was typical of his hits from earlier in the decade.
But it just wasn’t his jam. It’s appropriate that his final No. 1 country hit came from an album called Kentucky Thunder because after two more top twenty hits, Skaggs fully embraced his bluegrass roots and has won multiple major awards, many of which have been billed as Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder. Skaggs is a Country Music Hall of Famer whose country music fame was almost incidental, nestled in between two lengthy and impactful bluegrass runs that are ultimately a bigger part of his musical legacy.
God, country radio was good when it had room for Ricky Skaggs, though, wasn’t it?
“Lovin’ Only Me” gets a B+.
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This song was an outlier for Skaggs. Immediately after LIVE IN LONDON album, which featured “Cajun Moon” arguably his biggest hit (a #1 from 1986), Skaggs singles started to lose favor with radio. Whereas Skaggs had had fifteen consecutive singles reach the top ten (with eleven reaching #1 or #2), the next album LOVE’S GONNA GET YOU SOMEDAY had the title track reach #4 followed by six straight singles that at best reached #10 and three of which were marooned in the 30s. After “Lovin’ Only Me”, the next single reached #5 and no subsequent single ever again cracked the top ten (and the hits became progressively smaller). As Ricky turned increasing toward his bluegrass root, radio increasingly lost interest in him.
No need to feel sorry for Ricky, however, as he has become a highly respected ‘Elder Statesman’ of bluegrass music, greatly in demand as a performer and still making outstanding records
Paul-Werner Dennis,
Ricky actually had three more Top 10 hits after Lovin’ Only Me, Let It Be You (#5) on both Billboard and Radio & Records and both Heartbreak Hurricane (#9) and Same Ol’ Love (#6) on Radio & Records.
Sorry, I was going by Billboard only.
As a young listener, I always struggled to contextualize Skaggs or place him on country’s time-line. His early traditional sound made me think he was older than he was when he was hitting the top of the charts, and once he was no longer charting, I was surprised by how a star still as young as he was wasn’t having more mainstream success with the new country crowd.
Incidentally, I loved learning about his connections to bluegrass.
Regardless of my own confusion, Skaggs always sounded great like he does here.
Radio was king back then!
I cut my teeth on country radio in the ’80s and have great memories of the K-102 personalities who curated my fandom and education.
As Lionel Cartwright is about to sing, “I watched it all on my radio.”
This is my first Ricky Skaggs song that I’ve commented on here since my reviews only began starting in 1987. He’s long been a sentimental favorite for reasons I’ll get to later. His final #1 reminds me of Eddie Rabbitt’s “On Second Thought” a year later, not because they sound similar but because both Rabbitt and Skaggs adjusted their sounds to fit the trends of the era. Neither was a bad song but in the context of this feature, they both stand out as the last gasps of relevance for artists who stood out in their prime for their unique brands but now sound more like everybody else on the radio. It’s not intended as an insult, but it also means isn’t among my top tier of Ricky Skaggs songs. Catchy but without the instant ability to put you in a good mood and get your foot tapping as most of Skaggs’ catalog did.
It actually wasn’t until 1991 that my connection to Ricky Skaggs hit the next level. He came to my county fair that year and it just clicked at a level that no other grandstand performer had reached up to that point, and that was a very long list. I’d liked his music ever since I was a young child but from that point forward, hearing his recurrent hits took me back to that excellent concert. Fast forward 33 years later to 2024 and Ricky Skaggs made his triumphant return to my county fair. The GOAT was back! I didn’t expect he’d capture lightning in a bottle in the same way he did in 1991 and I was unfortunately right. It didn’t help that I drove up from Iowa with a threat of severe thunderstorms leaving serious doubt as to whether the concert would take place. The torrential rain hit just north of town so the concert did happen. I figured since he was performing with Kentucky Thunder that it would be all bluegrass, but he did play “Highway 40 Blues” and “Uncle Pen”. And my ignorance is one again obvious as I confess that, even though Skaggs specifically clarified that those songs were among his “country hits”, I couldn’t tell the difference between their sound and the remainder of the songs on his set list with Kentucky Thunder. I have a vague sense of what distinguishes country from bluegrass music, but when it comes to Ricky Skaggs’ biggest hits, I can’t tell them apart from bluegrass at all. Can anyone clarify for me what makes “Highway 40 Blues” and “Uncle Pen” not bluegrass?
Grade: B