“Killin’ Time”
Clint Black
Written by Clint Black and Hayden Nicholas
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
September 15, 1989
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
October 14, 1989
“Killin’ Time” is Clint Black’s most significant hit single, and also his most quintessential.
There are two recurring themes in Clint Black’s early work. One is the aftermath of heartbreak, and the other is struggling with the weight of mortality. How fitting that his signature hit is the one that explores the relationship between the two, where even death will not bring release from this pain, and you don’t even know if there’s whiskey there to help on the other side of the mortal plane.
It’s sophisticated and intelligent while remaining just plainspoken enough to be accessible as a barroom hit. Even on an album that is flawless from start to finish, it stands out for its exceptional quality. It even inspires his best vocal moment on record, when he brings the final line home with a hillbilly wail worthy of Haggard, Williams, and Jones.
It just might be the best No. 1 single from the best year of the decade.
“Killin’ Time” gets an A.
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Clint Black’s career definitely peaked early with this one. It’s a great song in every sense that a song can be great and for all the reasons you listed….great writing while still barstool-accessible, gritty vocals, and a compatibly sparse arrangement. I’m not quite sure I’d put it in the ranks of the best song of the year/decade, but it is fantastic, and highly deserving of its continued recurrent airplay on every country oldies station I’ve ever encountered.
Back in 1989, it was to easy to imagine Black being the next Haggard. He fell quite a bit short in a number of respects, but it also bears mentioning that the “killin’ time/time to kill” theme became such a trope is his songbook from this point forward that it diluted the impact of the original recipe. Some efforts worked better than others, but by the time his final top-20 chart hit “Spend My Time” came around, it felt like Black had spun the wheels of this particular dirt bike so far into the mud that a team of horses would be needed to pull him out. I’ll always love “Killin’ Time”, but the degree to which that same thematic note got stuck in Clint Black’s head for the next 15 years really boxed him artistically.
Grade: A
Clint Black is one of those artists who had a pile of hit songs and yet is still very much underrated. The fact that he still isn’t in the CMHOF is head-scratching.
He wrote some unforgettable and phenomenal number of songs. I wasn’t even listening to country music at the time this came out, yet Black brought me back. Killing Time remains a special song for me. I’ll always love it.
A bona fide classic, no question about it. I was kinda meh on ”A Better Man,” but when this song dropped it was a real eye-opener. ”Holy crap this is AWESOME.” I got the album on cassette tape for my birthday the next month, as I recall. (I will say that my opinion of ”A Better Man” improved considerably on repeated listens.)
The story behind the song is pretty neat, too. As Clint himself put it…
”We were about halfway through the album production, and Hayden and I were drivin’ off to some gig. We were always talkin’ about how ‘there’s a lot goin’ on, but there’s not a lot goin’ on around here…..yet,’ something like that. We had a lot of time on our hands, and I said ‘yeah, this killin’ time is killin’ me.’ We looked at each other, our eyes got real big, and we knew we had a hook.”
This was when Clint Black was the single biggest new country star, more popular even than Garth Brooks.
Classic hits like “Killin’ Time” were proof he deserved every accolade, award, and acknowledgement he would receive related to his stunning debut album.
Hard to hold a smile against a person, but there was always a disconnect between Black’s charming grin and the emotionally devastating subject matter about which he was so often singing in his early days.
Clint Black did as much for country music as any other member of the class of ’86 or ’89.
I remember country music basically exiting the stratosphere with this Clint Black single.