In May 2011, Tim McGraw was not just another guest star on the American Idol finale. A year earlier, Nielsen BDS had named him the most-played artist on radio for the entire decade from 2000 to 2009, across every genre. Scotty McCreery was a 17-year-old high school junior from Garner, North Carolina, who had been bagging groceries a few months before.
When the two met backstage, McCreery was the nervous one. What McGraw said first is the part McCreery was still talking about years later.
“We’re Gonna Do It Your Way”
Scotty McCreery told the story to Taste of Country in 2017, when he was 23.
“I remember when we went back stage I was nervous as all get out … First thing he said was, ‘This is your show, not mine. We’re gonna do it your way, tell me what you wanna sing.'”
A few months after the finale, McCreery described the same meeting to People. He said he was nervous talking to McGraw, but within five minutes the superstar felt like “a friend or a country dad.” According to that account, McGraw told him during rehearsal not to change the song, said he was a fan, and made it clear this was McCreery’s time to shine. His advice fit in one line: “Don’t change who you are and you should be good.”
The two accounts, given six years apart, highlight different words, but they describe the same thing: a star at the top of country radio stepping back so a teenager could lead.
The Song They Sang
The song was “Live Like You Were Dying,” written by Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman. McGraw has said none of his hits stands out to him quite like it. The demo reached him while his father, former major league pitcher Tug McGraw, was battling brain cancer.
Tug McGraw died in January 2004. Tim McGraw later told CMT that about four weeks after his father passed, he was in the studio around three in the morning when he decided it was time to cut the song. It became the title track of his 2004 album and one of the biggest hits of his career.
Seven years later, he was singing it next to a high school kid on national television.
One Spotlight, Then Two Voices
The duet aired on Wednesday, May 25, 2011, during the season finale at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. Voting had already closed, but the winner had not been announced.
Tim McGraw walked out in jeans, a T-shirt and his black cowboy hat. He stood still under a single spotlight and sang the opening by himself. Scotty McCreery came in on the next lines, matching McGraw’s delivery, and the two carried the rest of the song together. When the chorus hit, the stage lights shifted from soft blue to bright white.
Neither man moved around much. They did not need to. When the song ended, McGraw pointed at McCreery, as if handing him the applause. Host Ryan Seacrest then reminded the audience that McGraw had just been named the most-played artist on radio over the previous ten years.
Reviewers noticed the teenager held his ground. One Houston critic wrote the next morning that McCreery had never sounded better.
Then Ryan Seacrest Read His Name
Scotty McCreery did not go into the final announcement expecting to win. His opponent, 16-year-old Lauren Alaina, had sung through a vocal cord injury the night before, and McCreery told TV Guide he believed she had won until Seacrest actually said his name.
A record 122.4 million votes had been cast in the finale. McCreery took the trophy, sang his first single, “I Love You This Big,” and choked up as he went into the audience to hug his family.
Afterward, sitting in his dressing room with his parents, he gave the Associated Press his own explanation for why viewers picked him: “It’s because I’m one of them. I was just a kid who was bagging groceries three months ago.”
The “Country Dad” Kept Showing Up
The finale was not the last time Tim McGraw backed him up. In early 2012, McCreery recorded McGraw’s 1999 hit “Please Remember Me” as the goodbye song for American Idol Season 11. He sent McGraw a message to say they had cut it. McGraw wrote back: “Great man. I can’t wait to hear it. I’m sure you nailed it.”
On June 24, 2012, McGraw brought McCreery out as a surprise guest at his stadium show in Charlotte, North Carolina. They sang “I Like It, I Love It,” and before the song ended, McGraw asked the home-state crowd to “give it up for my buddy Scotty.”
When McCreery was asked in 2017 who would make a good Idol judge, he named Tim McGraw, and the reason went straight back to that backstage moment. “That was a pretty cool thing for a superstar to tell a 17-year-old kid,” he said. “I feel like he could put contestants at ease and help them through the format of the show.”