Lucille (Kenny Rogers song)

"Lucille"
Single by Kenny Rogers
from the album Kenny Rogers
Released	January 24, 1977
Genre	Country
Length	3:42
Label	United Artists
Writer(s)	Roger Bowling Hal Bynum
Producer	Larry Butler
Kenny Rogers singles chronology
"Laura (What's He Got That I Ain't Got)" (1976) "Lucille" (1977) "Daytime Friends" (1977)

"Lucille" is the title of a ballad written by Roger Bowling and Hal Bynum, and recorded by Kenny Rogers. It was released in January 1977 as the second and final single from the album Kenny Rogers. The song is about a man in a bar that meets a woman who has left her husband. It became Rogers' first major hit as a solo artist after leaving the successful Country/Rock group The First Edition the previous year. An international hit, it reached #1 on the Billboard Country Singles chart and #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached the top of the UK singles chart in June 1977, Rogers’ second single to top a sales chart on that side of the Atlantic.

Content

The song, told by the narrator (Rogers), tells the story of a man in a bar in Toledo, Ohio, who soon curiously acquaints himself with a downhearted married woman, named Lucille. When the drinks take their effect on her, she admits an unhappiness in life and vies for change and adventure. Her husband now on the scene (first observed by the narrator in a mirror and described as a mountain with big calloused hands) approaches her and the intimidated narrator. The brokenhearted husband, starting to shake, scorns her for her inconvenient timing in abandoning him "with four hungry children and a crop in the field" and expresses his culminating unhealed hurt. After the distraught husband leaves them, the determined narrator and married woman eventually make their way to a hotel room. Now all alone, the beautiful woman comes to the narrator and is blindsided by his odd, sudden change of heart. His reluctance giving way to those recurring haunting words that her husband pitifully told her.

Chart performance

Chart (1977)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles	1
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	5
Canadian RPM Country Tracks	1
Canadian RPM Top Singles	1
Canadian RPM Adult Contemporary Tracks	1
UK Singles Chart	1
New Zealand Singles Chart	2
Swiss Singles Chart	3
Australia Singles Chart	7
Austria Top 40	8
Dutch Top 40	17

Cover versions

• A cover version was recorded by American country music artist Billy Currington on his 2005 Doin' Somethin' Right album.
• A cover version was recorded by American country music artist Waylon Jennings on his 1977 album Ol' Waylon

References

Preceded by "Southern Nights" by Glen Campbell	Billboard Hot Country Singles number-one single April 2-April 9, 1977	Succeeded by "It Couldn't Have Been Any Better" by Johnny Duncan
Preceded by "Heart Healer" by Mel Tillis	RPM Country Tracks number-one single April 16-April 23, 1977
Preceded by "I Don't Want to Talk About It/The First Cut Is the Deepest" by Rod Stewart	UK Singles Chart number one single June 18, 1977 (1 week)	Succeeded by "Show You the Way to Go" by The Jacksons