First Female Country Artist To Have Three Consecutive Multiple-Week #1s
"Stand Beside Me" Tops Billboard's Country Singles For 2nd Week

Nashville (01/28/99) - Jo Dee Messina has done it again! With "Stand Beside Me" spending its second week atop the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, Messina has scored her third consecutive multiple week #1 - and becomes the first woman in country music to ever achieve this feat. "Stand Beside Me" joins "Bye, Bye" and the title track from her nearly-platinum I'm Alright (two and three weeks at #1 respectively) to give the fiery redheaded singer another first!

Follow up:

Not only did Messina set the record for most weeks in the Top 30 (35 weeks with "Bye, Bye"), which she then tied (with "I'm Alright"), the vocal firebrand was also the only artist to have two of the 5 Most Played Songs of 1998 - "Bye, Bye" was #2, while "I'm Alright" came in at #4. In addition to spending 10% of the year at the top of the country singles chart, earning one of only four gold country singles and receiving two prestigious CMA Award nominations for Video of the Year and Horizon Award, the woman hailed by New Country as "the most passionate singer on the country charts right now, bar non" also made inroads in Australia - where she was the first artists to have two songs in the country Top 10 at the same time, Japan - where she co-headlined the 10th annual Country Gold Festival, and Canada - where I'm Alright has been certified gold and is still selling.

"When you think about all these things, it's humbling and overwhelming," Messina says. "You make the music that you really believe in, that speaks to you and hopefully people like you, then you send it out and you hope. But it's up to the people at radio and the people listening to the radio for the rest of it. Those folks have been so kind... they've made an awful lot of dreams come true over the last year. In fact, they've made things happen I would've never dared dream of. That's truly something to be grateful for."

There's a lot more to come. Messina has been selected Country Music Television's Artist of the Month for March. She's the only solo female act on the George Strait Festival Tour of stadiums. She's slated for April covers of Music City News and KNIX magazines. She'll announce the nominees for The Music City News/TNN Viewers' Choice Awards - and she received five preliminary Academy of Country Music nominations; Album of the Year (I'm Alright), Single of the Year ("Bye, Bye"), Song of the Year ("I'm Alright"), Female Vocalist of the Year and New Female Vocalist of the Year.

With the way things are going, there won't be much Jo Dee Messina can't get done! And as long as it revolves around making great music she believes in, playing for the fans and getting to be with people who are as passionate about living life as she is, Messina wouldn't want it any other way.