"Highway Don't Care" is a song recorded by American
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
singer
Tim McGraw
Samuel Timothy McGraw (born May 1, 1967) is an American country singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor. He has released 16 studio albums (11 for Curb Records, four for Big Machine Records and one for Arista Nashville). 10 of those album ...
and singer-songwriter
Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her vivid songwriting—often inspired by her personal life—has received critical praise and wide media coverage. Bor ...
on
vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...
, featuring
Keith Urban
Keith Lionel Urban (born 26 October 1967) is an Australian-American musician, singer, guitarist and songwriter known for his work in country music. Recognized with four Grammy Awards, Urban also received fifteen Academy of Country Music Award ...
on
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...
. It was released to US
country radio on March 25, 2013, as the third single from McGraw's first album for
Big Machine Records
Big Machine Records is an American independent record label, distributed by Universal Music Group. Specializing in country and pop artists, Big Machine is based on Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee. The label was founded in September 2005 by fo ...
, ''
Two Lanes of Freedom
''Two Lanes of Freedom'' is the twelfth studio album by American country music singer Tim McGraw. It was released February 5, 2013, as his first album for Big Machine Records following 20 years with Curb Records. He co-produced the album with By ...
'' (2013). The song was written by
Mark Irwin
Mark Irwin (born August 7, 1950) is a Canadian cinematographer.
He was born in Toronto, Ontario, and studied political science at the University of Waterloo and filmmaking at York University.
He is widely known for his early collaborations ...
,
Josh Kear
Josh Kear is a Nashville-based songwriter signed to Sony/ATV Music Publishing.
In 2007, he cowrote Carrie Underwood’s hit "Before He Cheats" with Chris Tompkins. The song spent five weeks at the top of the charts. His song " Drinking Class", ...
and
Brad and Brett Warren. To date, this is Swift’s seventh number one hit. McGraw and Swift recorded their parts separately.
Composition
The song is a mid-tempo ballad where the male narrator is separated from his lover who is driving. Throughout the verses, he tells her what he "bets" she is feeling, when a song comes on her radio (its part sung by Swift) containing the lines "I can't live without you, baby." He also says that the highway she's driving on doesn't care if she's alone or if she's going home, but he does. The song is in
D major
D major (or the key of D) is a major scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Its key signature has two sharps. Its relative minor is B minor and its parallel minor is D minor.
The D major scale is:
:
Ch ...
with a main chord pattern of D-B7-G-A.
Keith Urban
Keith Lionel Urban (born 26 October 1967) is an Australian-American musician, singer, guitarist and songwriter known for his work in country music. Recognized with four Grammy Awards, Urban also received fifteen Academy of Country Music Award ...
plays
lead guitar
Lead guitar (also known as solo guitar) is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the featu ...
on it.
Critical reception
In his review of the album, Thom Jurek of
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
wrote that "the hook is irresistible and McGraw's vocal, paired with the young singer's, is a perfect match." Chuck Dauphin of ''Roughstock'' also reviewed the song favorably, saying that "this song flows well, with winning performances from two of the format's top vocalists." Billy Dukes of ''Taste of Country'' gave the song five stars saying that the track is arguably "one of the best collaborations of the decade – maybe even ever. Each artist brings his or her best effort to the song from McGraw's ''
Two Lanes of Freedom
''Two Lanes of Freedom'' is the twelfth studio album by American country music singer Tim McGraw. It was released February 5, 2013, as his first album for Big Machine Records following 20 years with Curb Records. He co-produced the album with By ...
'' album. 'Highway Don't Care' feels like a special moment from the very first listen, and only becomes more cathartic with time." Jeff Benjamin of
Fuse said the track has "major crossover potential". The song was ranked 30th best country song of the 2010s by
Taste Of Country
Townsquare Media, Inc. (formerly Regent Communications until 2010) is an American radio network and media company based in Purchase, New York. The company started in radio and expanded into digital media toward the end of the 2000s, starting wi ...
.
Accolades
Chart performance
The single has also been a commercial success. "Highway Don't Care" debuted at number 13 on the US ''
Billboard''
Hot Country Songs chart and number 43 on the US ''Billboard''
Country Airplay chart for the week of February 23, 2013, due to unsolicited airplay seven weeks before being released to radio. It also debuted at number 59 on the US
''Billboard'' Hot 100 and number 23 on the
Canadian Hot 100 for the week of February 23, 2013. The single also debuted at number one on the US ''Billboard'' Country Digital Songs chart with 86,000 downloads for the week of February 13, 2013. On October 17, 2017, the single was certified
triple platinum
Music recording certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped, sold, or streamed a certain number of units. The threshold quantity varies by type (such as album, single, music video) and by nation or territory (see ...
by the
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined sales and streaming data of over three million units. As of November 2017, the song has sold 2.3 million copies in the United States.
Music video
The music video was directed by
Shane Drake
Shane C. Drake is an American music video director and producer originally from Redding, California. He has directed videos for many artists, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Avril Lavigne, Trivium, Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Panic! a ...
and premiered on May 6, 2013. The music video for the song features Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift, and Keith Urban, as well as actors portraying the song's narrator and his lover. It was made in partnership with
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
The Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is a medical provider with multiple hospitals in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as clinics and facilities throughout Middle Tennessee. VUMC is an independent non-profit organization, but maintains acad ...
in Nashville, Tennessee and highlights the dangers of driving while distracted, particularly texting and driving. In the video, the narrator's lover mentioned in the song is driving, crying, and texting the narrator. After dropping her phone and trying to retrieve it, she drifts into the wrong lane while reaching across her car and collides with oncoming traffic. She is then airlifted by a Vanderbilt LifeFlight helicopter to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she is treated in the Adult Emergency Department. The video implies that she survives as the doctor comes out to see the girl's parents and the narrator, after which they are seen smiling happily and embracing that their daughters going to be ok.
The structure of the video at first seems to imply that Tim McGraw (as the singer/narrator and a character in the video) is the boyfriend who keeps being texted by the female driver. Upon the LifeFlight helicopter arriving at the hospital, the viewer realizes that Tim McGraw's character is actually the physician who saves the driver's life, and the texts he had been receiving earlier in the video were from the hospital paging/notifying him about this emergency. Taylor Swift was standing in the bedroom-curtain. Keith Urban was standing on the beach.
Official versions
*Album version (4:36)
*Duet with Brazilian singer
Paula Fernandes, a ''
Porglish
Porglish or Portugish (referred to in Portuguese as ''portinglês'' – Brazilian Portuguese, Brazilian: , European Portuguese, European: – or ''portunglês'' – pt-BR: , pt-PT: ) is the various types of language contact between Portuguese ...
'' version (4:38)
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
References
{{authority control
2013 singles
Tim McGraw songs
Taylor Swift songs
Male–female vocal duets
Songs written by Josh Kear
Songs written by the Warren Brothers
Songs written by Mark Irwin (songwriter)
Song recordings produced by Byron Gallimore
Song recordings produced by Tim McGraw
Music videos directed by Shane Drake
Country ballads
Big Machine Records singles
2013 songs
2010s ballads
Vehicle wreck ballads