Released April 29, 1991 Genre Country | Recorded August 21, 1990 Length 2:52 | |
B-side "Walkin' the Floor Over Me" Format 7-inch 45 RPM, promo-only CD single | ||
"Don't Rock the Jukebox" is a song co-written and performed by American country music artist Alan Jackson. It was released in April 1991 as the lead single from the album of the same name, Don't Rock the Jukebox. It was his second consecutive Number One single on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts. Jackson wrote the song with Roger Murrah and Keith Stegall.
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The song also received an ASCAP award for Country Song of the Year in 1992. That same year, the song was covered by Alvin and the Chipmunks, featuring commentary by Alan Jackson himself, for their 1992 album Chipmunks in Low Places.
Background and writing
The song is sung from the perspective of a heartbroken bar patron who wishes to hear country music to ease his heartbreak. As such, he tells the other patrons in the bar, "don't rock the jukebox" (i.e. play country instead of rock).
Alan wrote about the inspiration for the song in the liner notes from The Greatest Hits Collection: "I wanna tell you a little story about an incident that happened on the road a couple years ago when me and my band, The Strayhorns, were playing this little truck stop lounge up in Doswell,_Virginia - a place called Geraldine's. We'd been there for four or five nights, you know, playing those dance sets. It'd been a long night, I took a break and walked over to the Jukebox. Roger, my bass player, was already over there reading the records, you know. I leaned up on the corner of it and one of the legs was broken off, jukebox sort of wobbling around, you know. And Roger looked up at me and said..."
Critical reception
Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe gave the song an A grade," saying that the song "defies explanation" because Jackson "perfectly inhabits the song’s affable weariness, and because Scott Hendricks and Keith Stegall arrange it to honky-tonk heaven."
Music video
The music video for the song, directed by Julien Temple, consists of Jackson playing his guitar and singing the song while standing in front of a jukebox. As he does this, a seated figure in the shadows nods his head and taps the table to the beat. Several people come and dance in front of the jukebox during the song, while some people who come up to the jukebox shake it around angrily (thus prompting Jackson to sing the title line of the song). At the end of the video, the seated figure is revealed to be none other than George Jones (who is mentioned in the song's lyrics several times). Also about a minute into it, Hal Smith, who played Otis Campbell the town drunk on the Andy Griffith Show in the 60's appears as a bum who tries playing the jukebox.