Every No. 1 Single of the 2000s: Toby Keith, “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This”

 

“You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This”

Toby Keith

Written by Toby Keith

Radio & Records

#1 (4 weeks)

February 9, February 23, March 9 – March 16, 2001

Billboard

#1 (3 weeks)

March 3, March 17 – March 24, 2001

We’re only a year into the new decade, but we’ve already got a throwback to the nineties as Toby Keith returns to the sound that made him such a reliable B-lister in the nineties.

It’s frustrating in a sense because as well as he did records like this, they weren’t going to get him into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His 2000s pivot was necessary for that, and he would enter the studio following this project with that knowledge in mind.

But he was still covering all his bases on his DreamWorks debut, and “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This” makes for a fascinating contrast. Very few artists have this much range, and Keith’s strengths as both a songwriter and a singer placed him in the upper echelon of both fields. An even more powerful contrast in my mind is with the recent No. 1 “We Danced,” which also builds to a chorus where the couple dances. Keith’s power as a singer and poetry as a writer give this record’s chorus a velocity that Paisley’s record lacked.

While these two are dancing, you’re falling in love, too, and hoping that she really does mean it like that.

It’s as good a ballad as he ever released, and shh…spoiler alert: he never stopped being a brilliant balladeer.

“You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This” gets an A.

Every No. 1 Single of the 2000s

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6 Comments

  1. Good song and performance. A solid “B”. Toby was an artist I never appreciated at the time he was a big star, but I was wrong. He had a ton of talent.

  2. Sigh. The last “90s Toby Keith” hit. I certainly didn’t realize it at the time as I figured this version of Toby would continue in at least some capacity moving forward. It probably did to some degree, but there were no additional pop-country power ballads that had this strong of a run on the charts. It was like a switch went off that couldn’t be switched back. I didn’t completely reject Toby’s outlaw persona but it definitely wasn’t my favorite version of him. My favorite version of him came from songs like this….smooth and polished with dramatic vocal and instrumental flourishes.

    I was out of the loop with country videos for most of the early 2000s and I don’t think I saw this one before. It was an interesting choice to do an age-gap couple and it mostly worked for me, raising the stakes for the electric connection that develops during the dance. This one still gets recurrent play on my local classic country station, which is more than be can be said for anything from Toby’s “Blue Moon” and “Dream Walking” era.

    Grade: A-

  3. One thing I like about Dream walkin’ and this album is hearing him do old school ballads but with more modern sounding James stroud production and not Nelson larkin’s keyboards and reverb.

    I love the way the first chorus keeps going on and on. It gives a real tension and momentum. Songs that break structure like that are always fun in my book.

  4. Bobby makes a great point about the unique, continual structure of the chorus. The soaring melody here also makes this song quite compelling. I did like a lot of Toby Keith’s later work (though mostly album cuts rather than singles), but I love his ballads. They really showed how good of a singer he was.

  5. This was one of my favorites when it first came out, and it’s still one of my favorite Toby Keith songs of all time. I love the qualities about it that have already been mentioned by other commenters, such as the updated, beefier production by James Stroud that helped bring the classic Toby Keith ballad into the 21st century, and how unique the first chorus is by building more and more tension as it goes on with its soaring melody. Also, I’ve always just loved how dreamy the intro sounds with the beautiful melody and steel guitar and synthesizer that opens the song, which makes me envision a night time sky full of stars. That dreamy quality continues into the first verse for me as Toby is noticing that “different feel” about his special lady while a cool futuristic sounding steel guitar plays in the background. The way he sings that verse, to me, almost seems like he’s not sure if it’s real or not, and I love the lines “I even think I saw a flash of light…It felt like electricity.” which adds to the dreaminess of the moment he’s singing about. Even the chorus puts an image in my mind of the couple dancing in a fantasized version of a bar where there’s a lot of smoke/mist on the dance floor and everybody else in the place is just watching the two as they officially fall in love and are no longer “just friends.” That certain dream like feel throughout the entire song just puts a smile on my face every time! And it’s even more sweeter that it’s very likely all real and she really does “mean it like that.”

    This is also one of my favorite vocal performances from Toby with the way he sings the soaring, intense choruses to the tender way he delivers the first verse and first part of the second chorus. Love the way he sings the last “Kiss me agaaaaain!” at the end, too. I also love how his voice blends well with the background singers during the choruses. Since this side of Toby was rarely being represented anymore on the radio by 2004 (at least in my area), it’s a shame that not as many people were being reminded just how great he could deliver ballads. Even this song was becoming more rare as a recurrent by the mid 2000s on our stations, unfortunately. Whenever I did get to hear it, it was always very refreshing compared to most of the new stuff that was out, including some of Toby’s mid-late 2000s singles.

    The first time I heard “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This” was one night in Fredericksburg, Virginia in late 2000 as my parents and I had just left Spotsylvania Mall, and we were heading to Route 1 near the Rappahannock River on our way home. I also vividly remember there being a full moon out that night. The DJ on WFLS introduced it as Toby Keith’s new song, and I was pretty much falling in love with it by the time the first chorus started. I remember thinking it was nice to be hearing this familiar, tender side of Toby again after he had sort of established his more brash, rocking side with both “How Do You Like Me Now?!” and “Country Comes To Town.” It would continue to be a favorite of mine to hear from that point on.

    Fast forward to early 2001, I remember WFLS also featured this song on a game/contest they started doing called the “Twisted Tune,” which they usually did when Lee Richards was doing the evening shift on weeknights. They would take little bits and pieces of a song and randomly jumble them up together, play that little clip over the air, and then let listeners guess which song it was. I remember being able to recognize Toby’s song the night I heard the “twisted” version of “…Kiss Me Like This” playing on the radio in my bedroom. Another song I remember being featured as a “Twisted Tune” was Clay Davidson’s “Sometimes” (another favorite of mine).

    Also in early 2001, while “…Kiss Me Like This” was the current Toby single, my parents and I were over at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Virginia one night and while my dad and I were in the music store called The Wall, we met the lady working there who was also a huge country music fan. She especially loved Phil Vassar (she had his debut album playing in the store earlier when I was there alone) and Toby Keith. I was actually there looking for Toby’s debut album, since I was collecting older debut albums at the time, and she got all excited and started telling us about how big a fan she was, and she even showed us a picture of her together with Toby from when she had recently met him in person, which I thought was pretty cool. She also tried recommending us his How Do You Like Me Now?! album that night, but I was regretfully only interested in his debut album at the time. I must say, after having added that album to my collection years later, she was most definitely right about it being good! It’s personally one of my favorite Toby albums besides Dream Walkin’, Blue Moon, and Pull My Chain. Besides the singles, other songs on it I really enjoy are “Blue Bedroom,” “Stelen’s Song (Heart To Heart),” “Bottom Of My Heart,” “I Know A Wall When I See One,” “She Only Gets That Way With Me,” “Hold You, Kiss You, Love You,” and “When Love Fades.” It’s simply a great example of contemporary country done right, imho, and James Stroud’s production on it holds up extremely well and still sounds fresh today.

    In the “How Do You Like Me Now?!” thread, I mentioned how I loved seeing him finally get his due on the 2001 ACM awards. However, I misremembered him saying “How do you like me now?!” to the audience when he won his first award of the night. I thought it was when he won Male Vocalist, but it was actually when he won Album Of The Year for the album of that name that he held the award up high and yelled “How do you like me now?!” to his past doubters (maybe to Mercury records, especially), which I thought was pretty cool at the time. And THEN later that night, he also ended up winning Male Vocalist of The Year for the first time ever, which I also thought was really neat and refreshing. I remember laughing when he started his victory speech by saying “You shouldn’t kiss me like this, unless you mean it like that!” LOL!

    I always enjoyed seeing the music video for “..Kiss Me Like This” on GAC, as well. While it wasn’t exactly how I envisioned the song, I still thought it was mostly very well done. The ending always makes me laugh, which keeps up the then new trend of Toby adding humor to his videos. I also always liked the shots of Toby dancing around to the flow of the song by himself in his vest and black cowboy hat. I remember both my step dad and I were rooting for it as one of the nominees for Video Of The Year during the 2001 ACM’s.

  6. How dirty is that guitar work at the climax of the song?

    Keith is a brilliant vocalist.bhe could be shockingly tender and tough. He first demonstrated his peerless sense of drama and vocal urgency for me with “We Were in Love.”

    Keith continued to be a great album artist throughout his entire career. He never stopped recording stunning ballads even as he leaned fully into his roughneck persona.

    This hit is a tremendous example of his versatility and artistic depth, the perfect counterpoint when less generous critics want to pigeonhole Toby Keith as nothing more than a redneck patriot.

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