Addicted

This song was inspired by a converstion with her sister who was trying to decide if she should stay in a relationship.

The man comes by less and less, but the woman doesn't want to call it off. At first, things were great, but now things are getting worse. The woman thinks she's addicted to a real bad thing. She wants to call it off, but she can't.

Dan Seals recorded this song and it hit #1 on the Country Music Charts. Not bad for her first album. Here is Dan and Cheryl with a live performance from YouTube.

The Dan Seals' version is missing the last verse of the song. Here is what Cheryl had to say about why that happened:

I doubt that was Dan's call, I think it was Kyle Lehning's and I think it was a good one.

When I was writing that last verse, I remember feeling it was making the song too long, but it was a very emotional song for me, about my sister, and I cared more about saying what I felt and what I thought she felt than doing what might have better served the song.

When I heard Dan had recorded it, and especially that it was going to be a single, I expected a verse would be cut out.

Kyle is a great producer with excellent instincts for radio and hit records. He produced lots and lots of hit records with: England Dan and John Ford Coley, Dan Seals, Randy Travis, Baily and the Boys and many others I'm not remembering. Happily for me, "Addicted" actually went to #1 and I doubt that it would have if that last verse had been there.

Somebody posted a clip of Cheryl and Dan Seals performing this song on American Music Shop. Cheryl made the following comment:

So cool that someone posted that vid of Dan and me doing Addicted. I remember that day so well. On American Music Shop (always a really fun, really cool show) there'd be a run through in the early afternoon, then dinner and make-up (always a creepy part, for me) then show time. So there were many hours between run through and show.

Addicted was a song that came really fast to me. I'd just hung up the phone with the person the song is about, after she'd said "I feel like I'm addicted to a real bad thing". Chordally (is that a word?) it has a lot more going on than most of my stuff. Dan and I sang it in different keys, of course, and my recorded version had an extra verse.

Kyle Lehning, (who produced Dan's records, my Nashville record and many, many others, including Randy Travis) suggested we do Dan's version of the song, then find a way to get into my key, so I could do the last verse and last choruses. Kyle is uber musical and worked that out in minutes. So, I was playing most of the song in a key I'd never played it in, with capo in place to be where I needed to be for my bit at the end. Of course in the 3 or 4 hours since our run through, I'd completely forgotten the progression in Dan's key. But, the AMAZING Jerry Douglas, who had just learned the song, was playing it in his key, taking my capo position into account and quietly calling out the changes to me.

This will make sense to at least some of you. Also, that's Mark O'connor playing guitar, sitting next to Kyle. Man there are some amazing musicians out there.