With a career as decorated and long as George Strait’s, you’re bound to have a good number of underrated tunes. And while “Give It Away” won awards and topped the charts, it often times fails to get mentioned among his best tunes.
Written by Jamey Johnson, Bill Anderson and Buddy Cannon, George released “Give It Away” in July of 2006 as the lead single from his It Just Comes Natural album.
Inspired by Johnson’s divorce, he intros the performance by explaining the genius of Bill Anderson:
“At the time I split up with my ex-wife and I went in to write with Buddy Cannon and Bill Anderson, and I didn’t have nothing but this title/ and I ran it by Buddy and Bill. And Buddy said, ‘well, how would you start it?’ I said, ‘I don’t know’ and I just spit out a bunch of song parts… and Bill said, ‘why don’t we just use that.’
Bill Anderson is a songwriting genius and I learned so much from him over the years about writing songs.”
The song would go on to become George Strait’s 41st #1 single on the country charts, giving him the all-time record. The tune also won both the ACM and CMA Song of the Year award in 2007 and was nominated for a Grammy as well.