Toby Keith released more than 70 songs throughout his 30-plus year career. It's a career that was tragically cut short when he passed away from stomach cancer in 2024. The singer is known for mega-hits like "How Do You Like Me No?!," "I'm Just Talkin' About Tonight," "Should've Been A Cowboy" and more.
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But Keith also recorded plenty of songs that could have been hits, but for various reasons were not. We're taking a closer look at four of our favorite Keith songs that didn't get the recognition they deserved.
1. "Mockingbird" with Krystal Keith
Inexplicably, "Mockingbird," a song Keith released with his daughter Krystal in 2004, barely cracked the Top 20. The song, from Keith's Greatest Hits 2 record, was one of only three songs on the record not written or co-written by Keith. First released in 1963, Krystal was just 19 years old when the version with her father came out.
Krystal did have some moderate success on her own as an artist after the release of this song, but it seems like this song could have done more to propel her career forward.
2. "Hope On The Rocks"
"Hope On The Rocks" was the title track of Keith's 16th studio album. Showing off a softer side of him, Keith wrote the song by himself. With lines like "I'm a bartender / At the end of the day / I'm all they've got / Hope on the rocks," the song showed a softer side of Keith, which is perhaps why it barely cracked the Top 30.
"When I handed the album over to the label and management, it wasn't the first one that popped up, but it wasn't three days before it reared its head as the pick of the litter," Keith said at the time (via Songfacts).
3. "Shut Up And Hold On"
"Shut Up And Hold On" is one of only a handful of songs Keith ever released that didn't even hit the Top 40. From his 2013 Drinks After Work record, the song seemed to check all of the boxes for country radio, but failed to do well anyway. Written with Bobby Pinson, Keith later revealed he had an inkling the song might not work as well as some of his others.
"We were messing around with the vocal and trying to get some different drum sounds," he said. "We got the groove where we wanted it and I started singing, but it was almost strange. It wasn't laying down quite like I had thought when we were writing. But when they sent me the mix I said, 'Wow, that thing really took off.' When people on the team heard it I started getting lots of text messages about how much they love it. It sort of rose from the ashes."
4. "Happy Birthday America"
Known for releasing patriotic songs, Keith's "Happy Birthday America" came out in 2021, from his Peso In My Pocket project. With lines like "Happy birthday, America / It's the Fourth of July / I'll get to wake up in your freedom / But sometimes I wonder why," the song seems perfect to play every year on Independence Day.
Keith was inspired to write the song in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.
"Last Fourth of July, the world was upside down," Keith later told Audacy. "There was riots going on, there was a pandemic going on, there was politic-crazy going on... everything was crazy. I'm up at the lake and there's like 5,000 boats tied together in this cove and they're getting ready to do a gazillion dollars worth of fireworks. It's a big deal. You sync your radio station; everybody syncs to the lake radio station ... Everybody's cheering, and I was thinking, 'It's our birthday, and our country's just a dumpster fire.' So I went, 'Happy Birthday America, whatever's left of you.' And then I went, 'Wow, I'm gonna write that.'"
