Standing Out In A Crowd

Album: Jasper County (2005)
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Songfacts®:

  • Trisha Yearwood's Jasper County album is better known for the single "Georgia Rain," but this cut stood out from the crowd and earned plenty of praise despite not being issued as a single.

    Written by country songwriters Maia Sharp and Sarah Majors, the self-esteem anthem calls for embracing the unique qualities that set us apart from our peers. Sharp and Majors bonded over their shared experiences growing up taller than their classmates and feeling left out - conversations that fueled "Standing Out In A Crowd."
  • The album marked Yearwood's return to the recording studio after a four-year hiatus. In the interim, she moved to Oklahoma to be with her soon-to-be husband Garth Brooks and his three daughters. Having children in her life and witnessing their struggles to fit in helped her relate to Sharp's song, which was outside of her wheelhouse.

    "That's probably the most atypical song I've done. I don't really do anthem-type songs," she told The Oklahoman. "But that song felt personal to me, especially now that I'm involved with a man with three children. I see on a daily basis how important those things are when you're a kid."
  • Yearwood also performed an acoustic version on the reality series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in a 2005 episode that revolved around rebuilding a summer camp for children with special needs. The performance affected Sharp in a big way and made her reevaluate her own insecurity that inspired the song.

    She told Huffpost in 2012: "Trisha came and sang around the campfire and sang that song to these kids. Killed. I was done. I was a wasteland. That's a connection. I was awkwardly tall [growing up], but who f--king cares about being awkwardly tall. This is what they're dealing with? Oh my god. So my slivered version of that experience has landed with these kids that are really dealing with something? That's a win."
  • Sharp, who contributed backing vocals to Yearwood's version, recorded this for her 2006 EP, Eve And The Red Delicious, and again in 2012 for her self-produced album, Change The Ending.
  • The album reunited Yearwood with Garth Fundis, who produced her first six albums, and co-produced with her the 2000 release, Real Live Woman.
  • Jasper County went to #1 on the Country Albums chart and was her second album to top the tally (the first was 2001's Inside Out). It also became her highest-charting album on the genre-spanning Billboard 200, where it peaked at #4.

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