"Paint Me a Birmingham" is a song written by Buck Moore and Gary Duffy. It was concurrently released by American country music artists Ken Mellons and Tracy Lawrence, whose versions entered the country charts within one week of each other. Lawrence's was the more successful of the two, reaching #4 in May 2004 and becoming his first Top 5 country hit since "Lessons Learned" in April 2000.[1]
Content
The narrator/singer describes an encounter with an artist who is painting ocean scenes. The singer asks the painter to paint a picture of the life the man had planned, or imagined, before losing the woman he loved. Specifically, he describes the house, a Birmingham-style house,[2] and a scene where he and his love are together again. The song is in the key of G-flat major, modulating up to A-flat major at the last chorus, with a vocal range from A♭3 to D♭5.[3]
On his 2004 album Bipolar and Proud, country music parodist and comedian Cledus T. Judd parodied the song as "Bake Me a Country Ham", featuring guest vocals from Tracy Lawrence. Judd's parody reached #58 on the country music charts.
References
^Whitburn, Joel (2008). Hot Country Songs 1944 to 2008. Record Research, Inc. ISBN978-0-89820-177-2.
