Tim McGraw Brings Three Decades of Country Hits to Tulsa

by Julian Spivey

Aprille Hanson-Spivey Photo

Tim McGraw brought his many country hits spanning over three decades to the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla. on Saturday, April 13 for a packed crowd of adoring fans.

Having never seen McGraw live before I didn’t know whether he had entered the “legacy act” portion of his career or if he was still selling out arenas and now I know at nearly 57 years old and not having a major hit in nearly a decade that he still packs them in. If BOK Center wasn’t sold out on Saturday night it was damn near it.

McGraw began his set off with the lowest point of the evening and of his career with his nonsense 2012 song “Truck Yeah,” which barely cracked the top 10 on country radio airplay so I’m surprised it’s something he hauls out as a tour opener a dozen years later. I will admit the crowd didn’t hate it nearly as much as I did.

McGraw’s set would improve from there with greatest hits scattered throughout with some new songs like the title track to his most recent album “Standing Room Only” from last year and “One Bad Habit,” seemingly from an upcoming album.

The hits varied for me with myself typically preferring the ones that were 20-plus years old as opposed to some of his more recent ones like 2010’s No. 1 “Felt Good on My Lips” and 2012’s “Shotgun Rider.”

My favorite performance of the main set was of 1997’s No. 1 “Just to See You Smile,” which I’d been concerned he wouldn’t perform because it hadn’t appeared all that much on the Standing Room Only tour that kicked off about a month or so ago.

Other performances of major McGraw hits from the mid-to-late-‘90s that made my night and seemed to be a sentiment shared by the arena as a whole were his 1995 No. 1 “I Like It, I Love It,” his 1998 No. 1 “Where the Green Grass Grows” and his 1999 No. 1 hit (Tim McGraw has a lot of No. 1s in his career) “Something Like That,” which was probably my wife Aprille’s favorite performance of the whole show.

There were some slower songs from McGraw’s repertoire that I was happy to see him perform live and weren’t ones I really thought he’d do very often – both coming from 2002’s Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors – “Watch the Wind Blow By” and “Red Rag Top.”

I was very surprised by the crowd’s reaction to “Red Rag Top,” a song that takes on the heavy and, especially for country music controversial, topic of abortion. It’s a song I don’t remember being very keen on when it came out but was probably far too young to truly understand all of its meaning. I re-listened to it again as an adult a while back and it’s certainly among the best of his career. It was very awkward though during the song’s long instrumental outro when McGraw began waving his arm back and forth in the air to get the crowd to do the same thing as if it wasn’t a tragic song.

There were some curious choices in McGraw’s setlist. I didn’t mind getting to hear his faithful cover of the Elton John classic “Tiny Dancer,” which appeared on Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors and was even released as a single, but I probably would’ve preferred another of the artist’s many hits that he didn’t get to on the night like maybe 1997’s “Everywhere” or even something newer like 2014’s top-10 “Meanwhile Back at Mama’s” in its place.

Then there was the strange decision to throw his 2004 crossover pop hit “Over and Over” with rapper Nelly into the setlist – which I knew was going to happen because I’d been following his setlists online but I’d assumed the show would have Nelly’s part via video. So, this performance was essentially McGraw just repeating the chorus over and over (no pun intended) to his band. McGraw later utilized Taylor Swift’s vocals for a performance of “Highway Don’t Care,” making the “Over and Over” performance all the stranger without Nelly.

McGraw ended his set with a rocking performance of 2003’s No. 1 “Real Good Man” before returning shortly for a nice three-song encore that began with my all-time favorite McGraw song, “The Cowboy in Me.” With lyrics about questioning one’s actions and all-around not understanding all the reasons for doing what one does, it has always spoken to me internally. It was one of those “always wanted to see this live” performances.

McGraw followed “The Cowboy In Me” with his most recent No. 1 hit “Humble & Kind,” from his 2016 album Damn Country Music, which won Song of the Year at the 2016 CMA Awards for its songwriter, the excellent Lori McKenna, as well as Best Country Song at the Grammy Awards.

“Humble & King” is a terrific life advice song, which led into perhaps the biggest live advice song of McGraw’s career and one of the most massive hits country music has seen in the last quarter-century with 2004’s “Live Like You Were Dying.” I’ve always known “Live Like You Were Dying” was a great song but like many anthemic songs it began to grow annoying due to oversaturation fairly early in its life cycle and is one I’ve often skipped over the years, but it was a no-brainer way to finish out an evening of many of the massive superstar’s biggest and best songs.

Carly Pearce opened up the show on Saturday night and gave a performance that showed me she should be headlining her own arena tour, although she doesn’t seem to mind tagging along with McGraw.

Pearce has had quite the career since her debut album Every Little Thing nearly seven years ago and is on the brink of releasing her fourth studio album Hummingbird in June.

She’s already released two singles off the new album to streaming sites, the title track and “My Place” (it looks like previously released singles “We Don’t Fight Anymore” and “Country Music Made Me Do It” will also be on the album) and debuted a new one on Saturday night, “Truck on Fire,” which is in the vein of Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” and many Miranda Lambert singles and will likely be a hit.

She also performed great renditions of “We Don’t Fight Anymore” and “Country Music Made Me Do It” on Saturday evening.

My favorite performance from Pearce’s set was when she took on both roles in “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” her 2022 No. 1 country radio hit duet with fellow singer-songwriter Ashley McBryde, which earned the two a Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. The song has a unique spin on the cheating song theme in country music.

Being on tour with McGraw, Pearce also took the opportunity to pay tribute to McGraw’s longtime wife and fellow country music legend Faith Hill with a cover of Hill’s 1995 hit “Let’s Go to Vegas.”

I’d been wanting to catch McGraw on tour for some years but he hasn’t been too close to my neck of the woods in a while and was thrilled when I saw Pearce would be his opener. I look forward to hearing that new album of hers come June.