Billy's Music
Billy Dean has released 34 singles so far, 10 solo studio albums, with 4 of those albums going gold (selling 500,000 albums in the United States). Billy's awards: 1991 & 1992 BMI Pop Awards; 1992 Academy of Country Music (ACM) Songwriter of the Year; 1992 ACM New Male Vocalist of the Year; 1992 Grammy nomination Best Male Performance, Country; 1992 Country Music Association's Horizon Award; 1993 BMI Country Song Awards (2); 1993 BMI Million Air Plays Award; 1993 Country Music Television Rising Star Award; 1993 TNN Songwriter Award; 1996 Grammy (with others) Best Country Gospel Album.
Year |
Single Title |
Billboard Chart Position |
Album |
Cover Art |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1990 |
"Only Here For a Little While" |
3 |
Billy’s debut album produced 2 Top 5 singles and was quickly certified gold by the RIAA for U.S. sales of 500,000 copies. |
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1991 |
"Somewhere in My Broken Heart"
"You Don't Count the Cost" |
3 4 |
Billy’s second eponymous album (and his 2nd gold album) hit the streets in 1991 and contained 4 Top 5 hits that firmly cemented his arrival in Nashville. |
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1992 |
"Only the Wind" "Billy the Kid" "If There Hadn't Been You" |
4 4 3 |
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1993 |
"(You Got Me Over) A Heartache Tonight" "Tryin' to Hide a Fire in the Dark" "I Wanna Take Care of You" "I'm Not Built That Way" |
- 6 22 34 |
From Dolly’s platinum 1993 album Slow Dancing With The Moon, the duet "Heartache" wasn’t released as a single, but the lead single from the project, a song written by Dolly, was a group effort featuring appearances from Tanya Tucker, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Kathy Mattea, Billy Ray Cyrus and our headliner of last year’s Annual Summer Bash, the lovely and talented Pam Tillis. |
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Billy, Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Brooks & Dunn, Vince Gill and Alan Jackson recorded Common Thread: The Songs Of The Eagles. Although Billy’s version of “Saturday Night” wasn’t picked up by country radio, 6 other tracks hit the country charts and propelled the compilation to multi-platinum (more than 3 million copies sold in the United States).
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Fire in the Dark is Billy’s 3rd studio album (and incidentally his 3rd gold album). Unlike his first two albums, which were produced by Tom Shapiro, Fire was produced by Liberty Records' then-president Jimmy Bowen, with Billy as co-producer. The album spawned 4 hit singles (2 of them Top 10), including a cover of Dave Mason’s 1977 pop hit “We Just Disagree” that charted higher than the original version. Billy also covered James Taylor’s “Steamroller Blues” on this collection. |
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1994 |
"We Just Disagree" "Once in a While" "Good Brown Gravy" "Cowboy Band" "Men'll Be Boys" |
9 53 - 24 60 |
Both Billy and Pam Tillis contributed tracks to the soundtrack of the 1994 biopic about American rodeo legend and world bull-riding champion Lane Frost. Starring Luke Perry, the film details Frost’s life from his youth learning how to ride bulls, until his death in 1989. The single was later included on Billy’s Greatest Hits album (and his 4th consecutive gold album) that reprised his first 9 singles in chronological order. A fan favorite, "Once In A While" was Billy’s 1st single that didn’t break the top 40. |
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Billy co-wrote and sang harmony on Joe Diffie's Third Rock From the Sun. Although not a single, the rollicking song that extols the virtues of "Biscuit Lotion" received a good amount of airplay. |
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Billy’s 4th studio album was released in 1994 and was his final album for the label before Liberty's country music division was merged with Capitol Records Nashville. The album includes two cover songs: "I Will Be Here" was previously released by Steven Curtis Chapman, and "Misery and Gin," which was previously released by Merle Haggard on his 1980 album, Back to the Barrooms. |
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1995 |
"Yesterday" "In the Garden" |
- - |
From the 1995 album Come Together: America Salutes The Beatles, Billy delivered a homerun on his cover of the perennial Beatles song from 1965. According to the Rolling Stone and MTV, “Yesterday” is the #1 song of all time – and Billy’s version is right up there with the Fab Four’s original version. |
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Billy joined with fellow country music superstars Martina McBride, Emmylou Harris, The Charlie Daniels Band and John Anderson on a group effort (and winning his first Grammy) for the album Amazing Grace: A Country Salute to Gospel. The effort picked up the award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album. Billy and Susan Ashton delivered a tender and faithful rendition of C. Austin Miles’ Gospel classic, “In The Garden."
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1996 |
"It's What I Do" "That Girl's Been Spyin' on Me" "I Wouldn't Be a Man" "In the Name of Love" "Have We Forgotten What Love Is?" (feat. Crystal Bernard) "I Still Believe in Christmas" |
5 4 45 - 56 - |
Billy’s 5th studio album, It’s What I Do, was his first release for Capitol Records. The album produced four singles and reunited him with Tom Shapiro, who had co-produced his 1st 2 albums. |
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Billy lent harmony to Crystal Bernard’s debut single (and appeared on her next album as well). Crystal is best known for her roles on TV’s Happy Days, It’s A Living, and for 172 episodes of Wings. |
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Billy’s first holiday single didn’t make the charts but did make the rounds on country radio and can be found on many different country Christmas compilations. |
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1998 |
"One Heart at a Time" "Real Man" "Innocent Bystander" |
69 33 68 |
In 1998, joining with heavyweights Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, Olivia Newton-John, Michael McDonald, Neal McCoy and Bryan White, Billy recorded a Victoria Shaw gem (with Victoria singing along), “One Heart At A Time,” as a benefit for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. |
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Billy co-produced his 6th album with former Bread member David Gates, who co-wrote several songs with Billy. The song “Voices Singing” features the St. Nicholas School Children’s Choir of Chattanooga, as well as Billy’s son, Eli. The album also featured a duet with “The Australian Queen of Country,” Gina Jeffreys. |
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1999 |
"Buy Me a Rose" |
1 |
Billy joined with Kenny Rogers and Alison Krauss on Kenny’s album She Rides Wild Horses for this #1 hit. The song hit #1 in May 2000, making Kenny, who was 61 at the time, the oldest country singer to have a #1 hit. |
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2001 |
"There You Go Again" "Keep Mom and Dad in Love" (feat. Suzy Bogguss) "America the Beautiful" |
26 51 58 |
Kenny decided to re-visit the winning formula that gave him his first #1 in 12 years by again tapping Billy (along with this time, Suzy Bogguss) to provide harmony vocals on the title track of his new album. The track, “There You Go Again,” failed to reach #1, but did have a respectable showing with an ascent to #26 on the Hot Country Singles chart. |
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For the rarest of Billy’s singles, “Keep Mom and Dad in Love,” Billy joined Suzy Bogguss and 12-year-old singer Jillian Arciero (credited as Jillian). It was issued on Kenny Rogers' Dreamcatcher Records and to date has never been included on an album. |
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2003 |
"I'm in Love With You" "Slow Motion" |
52 - |
Billy’s 7th studio album is also his 1st release on the Asylum-Curb label. The album was originally to have been released in 2003 on View 2 Records, which promoted the first 2 singles ("I'm in Love with You" and a cover of John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy"). Asylum-Curb promoted the 3rd single, "Let Them Be Little," which was co-written by Richie McDonald, then-lead-singer of Lonestar, and recorded by the band on their 2004 album, Let's Be Us Again. Also included on the album are re-recordings of "Somewhere in My Broken Heart" and "Billy the Kid," 2 of Billy's early singles |
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2004 |
"Thank God I'm a Country Boy" "Let Them be Little" |
27 8 |
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2005 |
"This is the Life" "Race You to the Bottom" "Shine On" |
52 - - |
The Christ (A Song for Joseph) is Billy’s 1st Christmas album. His 2nd release on the Asylum-Curb label, the album includes covers of several Christmas songs, as well as the newly-written title track and "Just for Me and You," a duet with his daughter Hannah. |
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2006 |
"Swinging for the Fence" |
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2009 |
"The Greatest Man I Never Knew" |
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Billy’s 9th album was Billy Dean Sings Richard Leigh: The Greatest Man I Never Knew. Leigh co-wrote Billy’s breakthrough hit, “Somewhere In My Broken Heart,” along with many other hits for Billy over the years. |
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2010 |
"Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses" |
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2010 found Billy releasing his 10th studio album, The One Behind The Wheel, an album full of songs revolving around the theme of fast cars and eighteen wheelers. Billy knocks the ball out of the park with his renditions of country-music classics “Drivin’ My Life Away,” “Six Days on The Road,” “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses” and a stellar new recording of his earlier hit, “You Don’t Count The Cost.” |
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