Toby Keith
"How do you like me now?" The Oklahoma singer whose 2000 comeback single became the year's biggest country song, and whose post-9/11 "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" got him bumped from an ABC Fourth of July special, into a feud with the Dixie Chicks, and through a decade as country's loudest patriot.
Toby Keith Covel, born in 1961, busked on Music Row until a flight attendant who was a fan passed his demo to producer Harold Shedd, and "Should've Been a Cowboy" went to number one in 1993. The rest of the '90s were a label shuffle: Polydor, A&M, back to Mercury, a Sting duet at the 1997 CMAs. In 1998 Mercury rejected his new album, stuck two of its songs on a greatest-hits set, and told him to "go work on another album"; after they rejected two more songs he asked out of his contract.
DreamWorks took him in 1999, and when its first single stalled he had it pulled for "How Do You Like Me Now?!," a song he had written with Chuck Cannon and that Mercury had turned down. It spent five weeks at number one, became his first top-40 pop hit, and was Billboard's top country song of 2000; the ACM named him Top Male Vocalist in 2001. AllMusic's Steve Huey heard "a rough, brash attitude that helped give Keith a stronger identity as a performer," and the brash streak carried "I Wanna Talk About Me," a spoken-word country rap, and "My List," the CMA's 2002 Single of the Year.
His father, an Army veteran who had lost an eye in the service, died in a car accident in March 2001; after September 11 Keith wrote "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," in twenty minutes by his own account, and meant it only for military shows until Marine Corps Commandant James L. Jones told him it was his "duty as an American citizen" to record it. Released in May 2002, it hit number one that July. ABC dropped him from its Fourth of July special when host Peter Jennings asked him to soften the lyrics or sing something else; Keith's reply to the press was "Isn't he Canadian?" Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks called the song "ignorant," Keith started showing a doctored photo of her with Saddam Hussein at his concerts, and at the May 2003 ACM Awards he took Entertainer of the Year while Maines wore a "FUTK" shirt. He declared the feud over that August.
"Beer for My Horses," with Willie Nelson, spent six weeks at number one, and 2003's Shock'n Y'all, a pun on "shock and awe," sent "I Love This Bar," "American Soldier," and "Whiskey Girl" to the top. He opened I Love This Bar & Grill restaurants in 2005, founded his own label the same year, and kept playing for troops overseas; by his own count he did more than 200 USO shows in Iraq and Afghanistan. He died of stomach cancer in February 2024 and was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame hours later.
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