Paul
Overstreet

A master of catchy melodies and clever, concise wordplay, Paul Overstreet helped drive country music’s rise in popularity in the 1980s and ’90s. His songs brought a modern perspective to time-tested themes: relationships, faith, family, the power of love to unify and heal. Overstreet’s compositions “On the Other Hand,” “Forever and Ever, Amen,” “When You Say Nothing at All,” and “Love Can Build a Bridge”—to cite a few—rank among most the most recognizable hits of the era.

In a remarkable streak, Overstreet earned twenty-seven Top Ten country hits between 1981 and 1991. BMI named him Country Songwriter of the Year for an unprecedented five consecutive years (1987 to 1991). Overstreet won two Grammys for Best Country Song, two Country Music Association awards for Song of the Year, and a Gospel Music Association Dove Award for Country Recorded Song of the Year. The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted Overstreet in 2003. Overstreet also enjoyed success as a recording artist, scoring hits as a solo act and as a member of the trio S-K-O.

Born in Newton, Mississippi, on March 17, 1955, Overstreet grew up in the small Mississippi town of Vancleave, the youngest of five children. When Overstreet was six, his parents, Mary and William Overstreet, divorced; his father, a minister, relocated to California while his mother remained in Vancleave with the children.

A Budding Songwriter

Overstreet obsessively listened to the radio as a child and soon realized he could predict lyrics and their rhymes. As he listened to his favorite artists—including Johnny Horton, George Jones, Elvis Presley, and Marty Robbins—he paid close attention to the structure of their songs and began creating his own lyrics and melodies. He was eight years old when he saw the film Your Cheating Heart, Hollywood’s take on the life of Hank Williams, and began dreaming of a life as a country music performer and songwriter.

His mother sold her piano to buy his first guitar. His earliest performances took place at school talent contests, and his brothers periodically would drive him to Biloxi and persuade managers of honky-tonks to let young Paul perform as the brothers collected tips in their ballcaps. As a high school junior, Overstreet lived with his brother Wiley in nearby Prentiss, Mississippi, so he could play quarterback at a larger high school. There he bonded with other young musicians and formed a band. He also continued to work on his songwriting, inspired by favorites Tom T. Hall and John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival. His mother met the owner of a recording studio in Little Rock, who invited Overstreet to record there. He pressed three hundred copies of his first 45-rpm single, issued on Gold Hat Records, and sold them for a dollar at a local grocery store.

Hello, Music City

After graduating from high school in 1973, Overstreet moved in with his brother Norman in Waco, Texas, and worked for a construction company. Inspired by a concert featuring Tanya Tucker and Johnny Rodriguez, the young musician decided the very next week to pursue his long-held dream and move to Nashville. Fueled by single-minded ambition and youthful naiveté, he stuffed his clothing into a laundry basket, grabbed his acoustic guitar, and set out for Music City in a 1968 Ford Fairlane. He slept in his car until a job at a water heater factory earned him money for rent.

Overstreet frequented Lower Broadway clubs in an era when downtown Nashville was a rough and dangerous place, well before its transformation into a popular tourist destination in the late 1990s. He talked his way into performing for the sparse crowds, which earned him invitations to join bands with grizzled stalwarts and other young, struggling newcomers alike. Before long, Overstreet caught the attention of Bill Owens, Dolly Parton’s uncle and a music industry veteran. Owens produced Overstreet’s first Nashville recording, “Keep It in Mind,” released under the name Paul Overton on Artistry Records in 1975. Overstreet’s first songwriting cut came when Dolly’s sister Stella recorded “It’s Not Funny Anymore.” He married another Parton sister, Freida, and the two recorded and performed together, although their relationship was short-lived.

Overstreet signed his first music publishing contract with a company co-owned by record producer Jim Malloy and country star Eddie Rabbitt, where he co-wrote with emerging songwriters Thom Schuyler and Even Stevens. In 1982, he joined a music publishing company affiliated with the Oak Ridge Boys and scored his first major success when George Jones took Overstreet’s song “Same Ole Me” to #5 on the Billboard country singles chart and used it to title his Still the Same Ole Me album. Overstreet’s first #1 came three years later with “I Fell in Love Again Last Night,” co-written with Schuyler and recorded by the Forester Sisters.

Hitting His Stride

With country music surging. Overstreet teamed with other young songwriters, especially another future Country Music Hall of Fame member, Don Schlitz, to feed songs to several of the young, traditional-leaning artists leading the charge. Overstreet’s remarkable run of hits included Randy Travis’s “On the Other Hand,” “Diggin’ Up Bones,” “No Place Like Home,” “Forever and Ever, Amen,” and “Deeper Than the Holler”; Tanya Tucker’s “One Love at a Time,” “My Arms Stay Open All Night Long,” and her collaboration with Overstreet and Paul Davis, “I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love”; Michael Martin Murphey’s “A Long Line of Love”; Keith Whitley’s “When You Say Nothing at All,” later a hit for Alison Krauss as well; the Judds’ “Love Can Build a Bridge”; Kenny Chesney’s “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy”; and Blake Shelton’s “Some Beach.”

Meanwhile. Overstreet never stopped performing. His initial success as a recording artist arrived in 1986 as a member of  S-K-O, a trio of songwriters that included frequent co-writers Thom Schuyler and Fred Knobloch. The group scored a #1 hit with “Baby’s Got a New Baby.” In 1988, Overstreet returned to his solo career, first on MTM Records and then on RCA. His 1989 album, Sowin’ Love, yielded five Top Ten hits, including “Seein’ My Father in Me.” He recorded two more albums for RCA before launching his own labels, Scarlet Moon and Lucky Pony, to issue a series of independent albums. He continues to contribute as a songwriter, including co-writing several songs with popular newcomer Zach Top.

Overstreet and his wife, Julie, whom he married in 1985, have six children: Nash, Summer, Chord, Harmony, Skye, and Charity. Summer and Harmony are singer-songwriters; Nash is a guitarist in the band Hot Chelle Rae; and Chord is an actor and musician seen on the TV series Glee and Acapulco.