“Out of Your Shoes”
Lorrie Morgan
Written by Patti Ryan, Sharon Spivey, and Jill Wood
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
December 8, 1989
The seventies and eighties had produced some prominent second generation country stars, with Hank Williams Jr. becoming a superstar and Rosanne Cash making her and Johnny the first father and daughter to release gold-selling country albums.
The nineties country boom would produce two platinum-selling country music daughters, and it was Lorrie Morgan who broke through first. The daughter of Country Music Hall of Famer and Opry legend George Morgan, Lorrie was an Opry member herself for several years before her breakthrough on RCA.
While recording for another label earlier in the decade, she’d resisted pressure to abandon the Opry scene and hang out with the cool young artists of the day. Her insistence on sticking to an approach grounded in the Nashville Sound eventually paid off, as she signed with RCA Nashville and earned her first top twenty hit with “Trainwreck of Emotion.”
Her next single, “Dear Me,” went top ten, setting the stage for her next two singles to each top a different chart in a different decade. She closes out the eighties with her Radio & Records No. 1 single “Out of Your Shoes,” which goes down as smoothly as a Jeannie Seely torch ballad, but keeps its storyline firmly planted in modernity. She goes out on the town with her best friend, and all eyes are on them, but the guy she has her eye on is going home with that friend instead.
She’s not bitter or even terribly jealous. She just feels a sense of longing for a one night stand that could’ve been. It really does set the stage for the nineties, doesn’t it? The maturity and sexuality of both women are taken for granted, as is the fact that their friendship is obviously going to be solid in the morning. Morgan was born to sing records like this, and I think it showcases her talent better than any of her nineties No. 1 singles, which are all uptempo hits.
She wouldn’t top the charts with a ballad again, but she’d carry the torch song tradition well into the nineties with records like “I Guess You Had to Be There,” “Good as I Was to You,” and “Something in Red.” After you read about the upbeat hits in our Every No. 1 Single of the Nineties feature, do a deeper dive into her later ballads. You’ll find it deeply rewarding.
“Out of Your Shoes” gets an A.
[This is the final new No. 1 single covered in Every No. 1 Single of the Eighties. Highway 101’s “Who’s Lonely Now” kicks off our Nineties series below.]
Every No. 1 Single of the Eighties
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Thank you Kevin. Another wonderful decade covered. Still have my 90’s playlist on my phone and now I got a huge 80’s playlist. Hopefully you take a nice break before diving into the 2000’s which I’m very excited about seeing that it’s the decade I really grew up on through my teens. A lot of positive memories attached to 06-10 years especially.
The sexy sophistication of this hit made it sound exotic and new on the radio at the time.
Had we heard another song that sounded like this recently? I don’t think so.
Morgan was such a powerful vocalist it is a shame she didn’t take any of the ballads Kevin mentioned to the top of the charts.
I still believe “Maybe Not Tonight,” a duet with Sammy Kershaw, is an madly underappreciated performance.
Kevin, as for this feature, thank you.
I had a total blast following along with each hit from the ’80s and unpacking just what a great decade it was for country music, with an absolute abundance of classic performances from beginning to end, ranging from The Urban Cowboy craze to the Class of ’86 to the Class of ’89.
The decade so often gets maligned and unfairly mocked; the going narrative of the artistry from these years is a screw job of the many insanely talented country performers who were ’80s stars.
This featured shined a light on them and reclaimed their significance and rightful place in country music history.
Her slower songs always had a Tammy Wynette vibe to me. She is definitely underrated, and this was a great song!
And what an interesting decade it was for country music with yet another great song to close out the era.
Thank you so much for the content, Kevin. I’ve really enjoyed your fresh assessments of the top hits from the 80s that I still mostly love (and the commentary from your frequent posters) — though I’m still scratching my head over the unexpected harsh marks you gave to “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” :-) You’re a very gifted writer.
Fitting song to wrap up a great decade of country music and pivot into the next with an interesting new artist. This is one of her best songs, beginning with a clever concept and fleshing it out with details that are sensual without being particularly provocative. “Out of Your Shoes” gives off a Reba vibe in its presentation but is sweetened with Lorrie’s lush vocals. Recall from my previous review that I saw Lorrie Morgan with another young upstart named Garth Brooks at my county fair in August 1990. It was a great show and this song was one of the standouts. It’s too bad that it took her husband’s death to catapult Lorrie Morgan into the mainstream, if indeed that’s how it happened, but I’m sure glad we got to experience her even in tragedy.
I’ve long been a champion of 80s country and grit my teeth when I hear it maligned by those who wish to reduce the entire decade’s output to its lowest denominator. Perhaps this spring, if I’m stuck at work extremely long hours at my job (which does happen), I’ll do my best to back-fill some of the hundreds some of the hundreds of reviews that I missed in the 80s and 90s, but I’ve definitely taken the time to read almost all of them. I look forward to the 2000s. Not my favorite decade of country music by any stretch but still worth revisiting.
Grade: A
Probably my favorite single off Leave the Light On after Trainwreck of Emotion. Capable vocalist, even if she didn’t quite have the kind of stacked discog that Yearwood, Loveless or a few others had.
Lorrie was an interesting artist, definitely not a superstar (only three #1 singles and eleven other top ten singles) but with a varied catalogue of uptempo songs and ballads. Although she became virtually a non-factor on the charts after 1997, I find I really prefer much of her post-1997 output.