It's been 20 years since country band Rascal Flatts' album Me and My Gang was released in 2006, and bassist and backing vocalist Jay DeMarcus reflected on a couple of their biggest hits ever, "What Hurts The Most" and "Life Is A Highway" as they turn 20.
The band, which was formed in 1999 by DeMarcus, lead vocalist Gary LeVox, and guitarist Joe Don Rooney, had found some success on the country charts with their 2004 hit “Bless The Broken Road," but "What Hurts The Most," the first single off their Me and My Gang album, skyrocketed them to mainstream success in 2006.
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"It was one of those moments we were looking for a big song to release first, and it was our first record with Dan Huff," DeMarcus told Katie Neal at the Audacy studios on Jan. 6. "He came to us and said, 'Look, this has been cut before. Mark Wills had cut it. But I've held on to it for Keith [Urban], and Keith passed on it. I feel like you guys could do a great job with this song.'"
"It was just a no-brainer," DeMarcus explained. "It was one of those gut things... This song just stood out as one of those pieces of music that was so far above everything else we had had held at that point."
It seems fate aligned in many ways to make the song work for the group. DeMarcus even revealed that he "guessed at the key" while recording the song, because vocalist LeVox was out sick at the time, and it ended up being perfect. "We went in and tracked it, and it just felt like one of those moments we'd captured some lightning in a bottle," he remembered.
Then came the second single from the album, a song for the Cars movie called "Life Is A Highway"... one that nearly didn't happen.
"We didn't [know how big it would be] at the time," said DeMarcus. "John Lasseter, who was the head of Pixar Studios, he actually owned it. He started it."
The iconic director invited the band and Lyric Street founder Randy Goodman to dinner, where he pitched the idea of them covering Tom Cochran's 1991 hit "Life Is A Highway" for his upcoming animated film. They didn't initially love the idea.
"He showed us this story book that he had with sketches of like cars talking to each other, and I thought it was pretty silly, honestly. I'm kind of sitting there rolling my eyes," DeMarcus remembered. "He goes, 'There's this montage of down Route 66 and I just hear you guys singing 'Life is a Highway.'"
"I was like, 'Really? That's already been a hit. Like, everybody else gets to write their own song for the movie. Can we write something?'" he said. "And he was like, 'Nope.'"
DeMarcus remembered telling Goodman they should "pass" on the opportunity, but, luckily for fans, Goodman insisted. "Randy said, 'Well, you're doing it.' There was no question about it. I think he wanted to make us feel like we had a say in it, but we did not."
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The song went on to be one of the biggest of 2006, spending 20 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and still being the band's top-streamed song today. The success of both songs on the album helped it become the most-sold record of the year, with 6.5 million records sold.
"All the stars aligned and came together that year," said DeMarcus. "We were sitting at the Grammys, and Gary leaned over to me, and he said, 'Hey, look at the people that we're sitting in the room with. There's Beyonce, there's Jay-Z, there's Lady Gaga, Elton John.' And I was like, 'Yeah, I can't believe this, man. We're sitting in the same room.' And he goes, 'Now think about this: We sold more records than anybody in here this year.'"
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"That's one of those memories that chokes me up because when you dream about being an artist, you know, you hope you make it to the Grammys, you hope you have a hit song, but that's one of the memories that I'll always share with Gary that was uniquely our own, just between the two of us."
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