As son of Irish immigrants, who settled on the US east coast, Eddie Rabbit did not quite have all the typical makings of someone hoping to make it in country music, when he moved from New Jersey to Nashville in 1968 to aim for a career in songwriting. All of that quickly changed however, when Elvis Presley recorded his song 'Kentucky Rain' the following year and when Ronnie Milsap had his very first Number 1 hit on the country charts in 1974 with another Rabbit-penned song ('Pure Love').
When Eddie Rabbit passed away from lung cancer in May of 1998 at only 56, his last Top-10 hit on the country charts as an artist ('Runnin' With the Wind') already dated back 8 years. 8 years, in which the singer-songwriter, who had basically written all of his hit songs (among which were no less than 17 chart toppers on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart which made him one of the commercially most successful ones of the genre), had almost been completely forgotten. Even his own agent supposedly was unaware of his terminal illness until after Eddie Rabbit had died!
An oblivion which still seems present today and which presumably is owed in parts to the fact, that his biggest hits at the beginning of the 1980s made him a star far beyond the country music genre. Obvious reason enough for many to consider Eddie Rabbit more Las Vegas glitz than Nashville craft. Especially when his early producer David Malloy gets quoted by saying: "What I tried to do, basically, was make pop records that could be
acceptable to country radio."
Eddie Rabbit voiced a different view when questioned in an interview with Herb Sudzin in 1990: "Everything that I have done over the years is all country to me." But the first songs that come to ones mind, when Eddie Rabbit gets mentioned, are simply not so much the traditional songs, but his big pop hits, of which he got 8 into the Top-40 and 4 into the Top-10 of the Billboard Hot 100 after all.
Among them 'I Love A Rainy Night', which made him take over the very top of the Billboard Hot 100 from Dolly Parton (and her hit '9 To 5' from the soundtrack of the movie by the same name) on February 28, 1981. It stayed at Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 2 straight weeks as the most popular song in America. Eventually Eddie Rabbit und Dolly Parton held the top 2 positions on this most important chart with these 2 songs for a total of 3 weeks. A constellation, which was not supposed to happen again until 42 years later.
At that it was the Billboard Hot 100 chart-week of July 1, 2023, when Luke Combs and his cover-version of 'Fast Car' moved up to Number 2 behind Morgan Wallen's 'Last Night', which by now has already spent 15 weeks at Number 1 and has thus become the commercially most successful song of 2023 in America to date.
A constellation which got even bigger on August 8 of 2023, when for the first time in the history of the Billboard Charts (daring back to 1958) even 3 country songs (songs which have appeared on the respective Billboard country music charts) were sitting at the very top of the Billboard Hot 100!
Due to the socio-political controversy around the single 'Try This In A Small Town' by Jason Aldean, the song had already debuted at Number 2 in the week of August 1, before moving up to Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 the following week.
And even though there is some uneasy overtone around these 3 songs making it to the very top of the popularity ranking, it represents the most successful moment in Country Music history. Time will have to tell whether it will eventually be remembered for the music or for the controversy.
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