(written by Kelley Lovelace and Brad Paisley)Brad Paisley (#1 country, #30 pop, 1999)
In the early 1990s Brad Paisley was attending Belmont University in Nashville where he had been awarded a fully-paid ASCAP scholarship and was majoring in music business, receiving a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the Mike Curb School of Music Business in 1995. While in college, Paisley met a fellow student named Kelley Lovelace, who would later become Brad’s frequent songwriting partner.
After graduation from Belmont University, Paisley obtained a songwriter’s contract from EMI Music Publishing and wrote a big hit soon afterward called “Another You” which reached #3 on Billboard’s country chart for David Kersh in 1997. Brad signed with the Arista label in late 1998 and released his first single, “Who Needs Pictures” on February 22, 1999. This single peaked at #12, and his career as a performer was off to a good start.
“Who Needs Pictures” was also the title of Paisley’s first album. He and Kelly Lovelace had already started writing songs together, one of which turned up on the album, “It Never Would’ve Worked Out Anyway,” although this tune wasn’t released as a single.
One night Brad came over to Lovelace’s apartment in Bellevue, a suburb of West Nashville, for dinner with Kelley and his wife Karen. After dinner the two men went out on the terrace to see if they could come up with a song. As they were sitting there, Kelley’s stepson came out to give him a goodnight hug. Brad said, “You sure do love that little guy, don’t you” Then he said, “Let’s write a song about him. Let’s write a song that will make Karen cry.”
Kelley started thinking about what he would want his stepson to say about him after he is grown. The two songwriters decided to write the song from the boy’s point of view. What they came up with was basically the story of how Kelley and Karen met, fell in love and got married. The lyrics were autobiographical in the fact that Karen’s young son always came along when she and Kelly would go out on a date. The boy was five years old when they got married, and the kid in the song is also five. Paisley and Lovelace finished “He Didn’t Have To Be” that night and recorded a demo the next day.
At producer Frank Rogers’ house the following evening, Karen heard the song for the first time. Sure enough, she got pretty teary-eyed. After submitting the tune to EMI Publishing, it was decided to pitch “He Didn’t Have To Be” to George Strait, who was in the process of recording a new album. But George was in a mood and turned it down because he didn’t want to record anything sad at the time.
Paisley’s first album “Who Needs Pictures” was getting set to be released, and he was scheduled to perform at the Country Radio Seminar. Brad sang “He Didn’t Have To Be” live in front of a packed house. When he finished, there was hardly a dry eye in the room. Arista President Tim Dubois came up to him and said, “You need to cut that song.” In fact, Dubois summoned Arista to hold up the album’s release so the song could be added to it.
“He Didn’t Have To Be” entered Billboard’s country chart on September 4, 1999 and swung into the #1 position on December 11th, marking Paisley’s first chart-topper with just his second single. It was also his and Kelley’s first number one hit as songwriters. Kelly’s young stepson accompanied Brad to the 2000 Academy of Country Music Awards show where “He Didn’t Have To Be” was nominated for “Song of the Year.”
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