THE HIT HAMMER: Mac Davis' "Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me"

(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)

Mac Davis - "Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me"

Hit Number 1: September 23, 1972

Stay at Number 1: 3 Weeks

Try to picture yourself in this situation. You know you're bad news, and you know you're not the best with women, so you have the audacity to tell a girl who loves you to not get too attached to you. That doesn't sound like a very beautiful love song in my opinion, but that kind of thing exists, and it topped the Hot 100 for three weeks in 1972. Mac Davis' "Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me" is a "love song" where a guy can tell a woman is starting to fall in love with him, but tells her to back off because he'll just hurt her in the end. He hasn't hurt her just yet, but he knows he will eventually. The song is smothered in soft and sweet country rock, but it's really hard to disguise the content of the song.

Davis was still a pretty new name in the music industry when "Don't Get Hooked on Me" hit #1, but that doesn't mean he didn't have much success elsewhere to this point. Davis was the primary songwriter of two Elvis hits: "In the Ghetto" and "A Little Less Conversation", with the former making it to #3, and despite the latter only making it to #69, it's still a very well-known Elvis song. (They are a 7 and a 9 respectively) Despite writing a couple hits for Elvis, he didn't have any big hits to his name, yet. He had a recording contract with Columbia Records, and they requested that he write a song with a "hook" that will get listeners' attention. Davis apparently decided to take that literally, writing a song with "hook" in the title. It does have its fair share of hooks too, which is part of the reason it went to #1 for Davis.

On the surface, "Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me" is a perfectly fine piece of music. It's pretty well-crafted, with a mellow string section and a muttering guitar line. There's a backing choir in the chorus which wail along with Davis' lead vocal. Even though the content of the song is pretty troubling, and it's kind of awkward that Davis and company try to turn it into something innocent, I can live with the song. It's nothing spectacular, but it's still some decent, early '70s soft country rock songcraft. Like I've said for other songs that I've described as being insignificant but still decent, there are worse ways to get to number one. Though Davis would admit later on in life that he was never a big fan of his own song, as he saw it as being egotistical. It was only released because Columbia saw its hit potential. I'd have to agree with Davis on that one, but I'm sure he would rather have a life where he had a #1 hit, regardless of how he got there.

Davis didn't really do a whole heck of a lot after "Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me", but he continued to remain in the entertainment industry. He started an acting career in the later '70s, and starred in the movie North Dallas Forty. He continued singing and acting for the rest of his life before dying from complications of heart surgery in 2020, ironically on the same day as Helen Reddy, another artist who will soon appear in this blog. He seemed to be a pretty cool guy though, so it's good to see him have a pretty enviable life, which included a #1 hit. Sometimes it doesn't matter how you get there, it's just for the simple fact that you did.

GRADE: 6/10