It Aint Cool To Be Crazy About You by George Strait

Composing a Hit for the King

Dean Dillon had the line “it ain’t cool to be crazy about you” in his head for a long time. However, he could never follow through on the line. Dillon had never actually attempted to jot lyrics down on paper. He preferred to try to come up with the rest of it in his head. He had decided that if he ever did finish the song, he would pitch it to George Strait.

After a few weeks of Dillon trying to mount more lyrics to that first phrase, he got nowhere. Dillon decided to acquire the services of a songwriting friend of his, Royce Porter. Dillion and his wife went to visit Porter and his wife at their house. While the ladies engrossed themselves in girl talk, the men headed out to Porter’s 34-foot houseboat. They had a guitar and they were sitting on the couch, throwing some ideas around. During their brainstorming, Dillon told Porter about his line “It ain’t cool to be crazy about you”. Porter said, “Son, pass me that guitar”. They jumped right on it and they had finished the song “It Ain’t Cool To Be Crazy About You” in about an hour.  The men took it back up to the house to play it for their wives and Royce’s wife said, “Yeah, that’ll pay for the houseboat”.

The Pitching of the Song

The day after, Dillon’s publisher Larry Butler was so enamored with “It Ain’t Cool To Be Crazy About You”. He produced a demo session immediately just so he would have a chance to work the song. Butler initially pitched it to Mac Davi, not George Strait.

However, Dillon’s hopes that George would be the one to record the song eventually panned out as Davis passed on the tune and Strait stepped in to take it. The version of George Strait imitated the demo rather closely with John Jarvis’s understated, melancholy piano fills providing the song’s musical foundation.

The producer of George Strait, Jimmy Bowen was one of the people that were surprised that the king of country music selected it. The song “It Ain’t Cool To Be Crazy About You” easily sailed into the top spot on Billboard’s country singles chart December 6, 1986. It marked George Strait’s ninth of a record-setting forty-four No. 1 hits during his sensational career.

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