Songfacts®:

• "Cowboys And Clowns" was written for the 1980 Western Bronco Billy, starring Clint Eastwood as the star performer in a Wild West show. He's billed as "the fastest draw in the West," but only pretends to be a cowboy. Bronco Billy and the other performers in the show are just entertainers, playing to the Old West archetypes. In this way, they're a lot like circus clowns:
  
  Everybody loves cowboys and clowns
  You're everybody's hero for just a little while
  
  A big difference is that ladies don't fall in love with clowns, but they can't resist a man in spurs, even if he doesn't really mend fences or rope dogies. Much of the film deals with Eastwood's love interest, who joins the show.
• The Bronco Billy soundtrack was produced by Snuff Garrett, who came up with the title "Cowboys And Clowns." He brought in the songwriters Steve Dorff, Larry Herbstritt and Gary Harju to write the song and some others for the film, a tricky task because Clint Eastwood was very particular about the music in his movies. "Cowboys And Clowns" ended up being used in the opening sequence. Dorff, Garrett and Milton Brown wrote another song called "Bronco Billy" that was recorded by Ronnie Milsap and also used in the film.
• This was a #1 Country hit for Ronnie Milsap, later included on his 1995 compilation The Essential Ronnie Milsap.