It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You

Tim McGraw's "It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You" and Its Place in His Career

By 2009, Tim McGraw had established himself as one of the most commercially consistent artists in the history of country music. His run of number one singles stretching across the 1990s and 2000s was among the longest sustained by any act in the genre's modern era, and "It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You" arrived as a representative entry from the later phase of that remarkable run, drawing from his album "Southern Voice" and demonstrating the commercial craftsmanship that had become his signature.

McGraw was born Samuel Timothy Smith in Delhi, Louisiana, in 1967, the son of baseball pitcher Tug McGraw, though he did not learn of that paternity until his teenage years. He was raised by his mother, Betty Trimble, and took her surname through her marriage. After studying at Northeast Louisiana University, he moved to Nashville in 1989 and secured a recording contract with Curb Records, the label with which he would maintain a long and productive relationship. His early singles failed to generate significant traction, but his 1994 breakthrough "Indian Outlaw" ignited a controversy that paradoxically amplified his visibility, and the follow-up "Don't Take the Girl" reached number one and established him as a major commercial force.

Throughout the late 1990s and into the 2000s, McGraw refined a style that blended traditional country sensibility with a more contemporary production approach, a combination that proved exceptionally durable. He collaborated frequently with producer Byron Gallimore, and their working relationship produced an unbroken series of hits including "It's Your Love" (a duet with his wife Faith Hill that became one of the bestselling country singles of the era), "Just to See You Smile," "Please Remember Me," and "Live Like You Were Dying," which won the Country Music Association Award for Single of the Year in 2004. By the time "Southern Voice" was being prepared, McGraw had accumulated more than twenty number one country singles.

"It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You" was written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin, two of Nashville's most respected professional songwriters. Douglas had written "The House That Built Me" for Miranda Lambert and several other high-profile country cuts, while Shamblin was known for co-writing "He Walked on Water" and "I Can't Make You Love Me." Their collaboration on this track brought a level of craft to the project that matched McGraw's own meticulous production standards.

The song entered the Billboard Hot 100 on August 15, 2009, debuting at number 73. It climbed steadily over its first three weeks, reaching its peak position of 59 on August 29 before beginning a gradual decline through the remaining weeks of its chart run, which extended through at least five tracked weeks. On the Billboard country charts, where it competed more directly with its intended audience, the track performed more substantially. The Hot 100 crossover performance reflected the standard pattern for country tracks during this era, with occasional pop radio support generating supplemental chart activity beyond the core country format.

The "Southern Voice" album from which the track was drawn was released on October 27, 2009, and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, making McGraw one of the few country artists of his generation to achieve that crossover distinction. The album also produced the title track "Southern Voice," which became another significant country hit, and featured a broadly accessible sound that appealed to both country purists and mainstream pop listeners.

McGraw's ability to sustain commercial relevance into the second decade of his career distinguished him from many of his contemporaries. Acts that had emerged alongside him in the mid-1990s had largely seen their chart success diminish by 2009, but McGraw continued to release material that competed effectively with a new generation of country artists. This durability reflected not only his commercial instincts but his willingness to work with strong outside material from writers like Douglas and Shamblin rather than relying exclusively on a fixed creative formula.

"It's A Business Doing Pleasure With You" remains a representative example of Tim McGraw operating at peak professionalism within a commercial country framework, blending a playfully observed lyrical concept with the polished production and assured vocal delivery that had made him one of the genre's defining voices for nearly two decades.