There Ain't Nothin' Wrong with the Radio

Written by Tippin and country songwriter Buddy Brock, this novelty song is about a ramshackle car that barely runs but still has a working radio that can tune into all the country stations. Good enough for Tippin, who owned a car just like the one in the song. "It's my old car Daisy, 1975 Toyota Corolla. When she finally laid down, she had 271,000 miles on her," Tippin told Songfacts. "So Buddy and I have just finished up a song called 'I Wonder How Far it is Over You.' He said, 'What are we going to write next?' I said, 'I got the greatest idea in the world. It's about this guy and he's got this new girlfriend and she just keeps messin' with his radio, twistin' on the knobs, pushin' all the buttons back and forth. He finally says, 'Hey, knock it off, there ain't nothing wrong with my radio.' And Buddy said, 'No, we're not writing it about some guy you made up in your head.' He said, 'We're going to write that about your old beat-up car, Daisy, because the only thing on it that works is the radio.'" (Here's our full interview with Aaron Tippin.)

This was Tippin's first #1 hit on the country chart, and his longest-running at three weeks.

Tippin performed this with Alvin and the Chipmunks on their 1992 country album, Chipmunks in Low Places. The cover pokes fun at the song's bad grammar, namely the title: "ain't" is an informal contraction and when paired with "nothin'," it forms a double negative, implying there is indeed something wrong with the radio. Simon the stickler tries to fix it by singing, "there isn't anything wrong with the radio." Tippin tells the chipmunk that the lax grammar is what makes the song work: "It's a license we songwriters use to get the proper feeling."