The Everyman Is Everywhere

07/13/1998 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Michael McCall

Tim McGraw is the covert superstar of country music. In the last four years, he's sold more than 10 million records. Within country music, only Garth Brooks, Shania Twain and LeAnn Rimes have done better in the same time span.

But McGraw doesn't get nearly as much media attention as those stars. Does he feel under-recognized? "Sometimes I do," says the trim, soft-spoken singer. However, his response comes with a shrug rather than a scowl. "It's probably due to my personality," he says in a folksy, Northern Louisiana drawl. "I don't go out there searching for reasons to be in the press. And that's fine. Long as I can keep doing what I'm doing, I'm happy."

For now, at least, his profile remains high. While other Nashville stars struggle to maintain the followings they built during the country music resurgence of the early '90s, McGraw continues to sell out arenas and garner top sales figures.

To his credit, he's the only male country singer to achieve fame in the mid-'90s who has been able to sustain his success over several albums. In the early '90s, during country music's most successful period, a horde of male singers led the charge into the mainstream of American entertainment. Among those establishing long-running careers at the time were Brooks, Alan Jackson, Vince Gill and Clint Black.

However, in recent years, country music has seen women take a more prominent role. Twain, Rimes, Deana Carter, Trisha Yearwood and Martina McBride all have established strong footholds on the country landscape. But McGraw's most successful male peers--Billy Ray Cyrus, John Michael Montgomery, Neal McCoy, Clay Walker--haven't broken through to the heights scaled by the male stars who preceded them.

Of them, only McGraw consistently has sold multi-million copies of successive albums. His second album, 1994's Not A Moment Too Soon, has sold five million copies, thanks largely to two enormous hits, "Indian Outlaw" and the sensitive soap-opera ballad, "Don't Take the Girl." The follow-up album, 1995's All I Want, featured the hits "I Like It, I Love It" and "All I Want Is A Life." It has sold a respectable two million. Last year's Everywhere debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Country Album chart, due to the enormous success of "It's Your Love," a duet McGraw performed with his wife, country music star Faith Hill. 10 months after the album's release, it too has topped two million in sales.

"There's not really a recipe to selling albums," he says. "But nobody's going to buy a record if they don't believe that you believe what you're singing. People believe me; that's what I think I bring to my music. I sing songs that say what I would say if I was in that position."

As McGraw readily admits, he doesn't own a particularly potent voice. "I'm no Vince Gill," he quips. Nor does he own the sublime sense of rhythm and phrasing that make Strait and Jackson so effective. Instead, he has a sort of everyman earthiness that appeals to people. "I just try to keep it honest," he says. "Rather than try to put a curlicue or a lick wherever I can, I just try to sing it straight and show that I mean it."

Many of McGraw's primary traits mark him as country music's anti-Garth. He shies away from the press. He downplays hype. He stays away from wild vocal inflections. And he chooses songs about down-to-earth topics of love and partying rather than taking on epic themes and sensational story songs.

"I don't try to put people on," McGraw says. "You can't do it. People will eventually see through that. I just feel lucky to be doing what I'm doing, and I try to convey that I'm having fun. And I also think compassion is a good thing to spread, and I try to show that in the songs we do, too."

As for media attention, McGraw has had plenty of opportunities to stir the media machine, if he had so desired. His initial hit, "Indian Outlaw," drew the ire of Native-American groups who protested its trading on an old stereotype of their culture and lifestyle. He also drew attention because his relationship with his famous father, baseball pitcher Tug McGraw, turned out to be more estranged than storybook.

Then he began dating country star Faith Hill, who had ended a high-profile Nashville relationship with former Capitol Records country music chief Scott Hendricks in order to take up with McGraw. Hill and McGraw are now married and have a one-year-old child, Gracie; another is due in August.

Through all of this, McGraw steadfastly avoided talking about these subjects and refused any suggestions to increase his media profile by capitalizing on these various headline grabbers. "I'm just not very comfortable with that kind of stuff," he says. "The easiest thing in the world for me is to just be a regular guy. The hardest thing is when everyone expects me to be something other than that. Sometimes I think when people meet me they expect fire to be shooting out of my eyes. It's hard to impress people when you just meet them. So I just try to be myself and not worry about it."

McGraw does share one career characteristic with other mid-'90s male country singers: None of them have been able to break the lock that Brooks, Jackson, Gill and Strait seem to hold on the country music industry's most prestigious awards.

In characteristic fashion, McGraw shrugs off this lack of recognition, too. "If you look at who wins awards, who would you take one away from to give to me?," he says. "When someone does win, I can't really say they didn't deserve it. But, sure, I'd like to win some of them."

McGraw shows signs of breaking through. He scooped up several honors at this year's Academy Of Country Music Awards, including Best Single honors for "It's Your Love."

"We had quite a party," McGraw says with a twinkle in his eye.