Remember Which Mark Chesnutt Hit Made George Jones Mad at Him?

Mark Chesnutt scored a multi-week No. 1 hit with his remake of a smash Aerosmith hit, but it ended up backfiring on him. Not only did the song's success lead to him leaving his label deal, but it also made country icon George Jones actively angry at him.

Chesnutt scored a string of Top 10 hits beginning in 1990, focusing on traditional country fare including "Too Cold at Home," "Brother Jukebox," "Ol' Country," "Gonna Get a Life" and more.

In 1998, bowing to pressure from his record company at the time, Columbia Records, Chesnutt reluctantly recorded a cover version of "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," which had scored a huge pop hit for Aerosmith after they recorded it for the soundtrack to Armageddon.

"Which is the last damn thing I wanted to do," he laughingly told Taste of Country in a 2018 interview. "I did it because I knew if I didn't do it, they were gonna push me back on the back burner and I was gonna lose my shot. Then I wouldn't be on radio anymore. I knew that was gonna happen, so I said, 'Okay, I'll do it, just this once.'"

The song reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart on Feb. 20, 1999.

"As luck would have it, it ended up going to No. 1 hit for four damn weeks!" Chesnutt said, laughing.

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Even so, he didn't feel it was worth it in the end.

"George Jones got mad at me for doing that," Chesnutt shared, adding, "I don't blame him. I don't blame him at all. Here's this guy singing 'Bubba Shot the Jukebox,' 'Too Cold at Home' ... I'm doing all these country songs, and then all of a sudden, here I am singing with a big-ass orchestra behind me, doing an Aerosmith cover."

As he pointed out, it wasn't exactly a musical high-water mark for Aerosmith, either.

"They didn't write it, and it's not their type of song. That's not even Aerosmith playing on the track."

Chesnutt was so unhappy with the whole episode that it led to his departure from Columbia.

"It didn't sell anything," he asserted. "So I asked to leave the label, 'cause when it was time to go back in the studio, there was another pop hit they wanted me to cover. I said no, absolutely not. That made everyone at the label mad at me, and I got the reputation in town of being hard to work with. And once you get that label, then you're pretty much done."

Chesnutt has gone on to a long string of releases on smaller labels, still focusing on the kind of traditional country music that would have made George Jones proud.