Tia Sillers

By Charlene Blevins

Jul 31 2000

There is absolutely nothing average about Tia Sillers. First of all, she wrote her first hit song right out of college ("Lipstick Promises," with George Ducas). She has the unusual distinction of having "Blue On Black," which she co-wrote with her best friend Mark Selby and blues artist Kenny Wayne Shepherd, holding the record as the longest number one in rock chart history: a whopping 17 weeks.

A Fine Arts major (UNC Chapel Hill), this Nashville native has also done pretty well on the country charts. She co-wrote Pam Tillis's number one "Land of the Living" and the Dixie Chicks' mega-hit "There's Your Trouble." And now, she's entering uncharted territory again with the attention-getting ode to living life to its fullest, "I Hope You Dance," recorded by Lee Ann Womack. In addition to holding the top spot on both the Billboard and R&R charts for five weeks (at this writing), the song has earned a CMA Song of the Year nomination and has struck a chord nationwide. It is used at graduations, christenings and marriages, and was also used in a video to honor the slain students at Columbine, an honor that Sillers says tops them all.

She doesn't write the way others do, either. She plays guitar and piano well enough to pick out melodies, she says, but writes primarily "in her head."

"I think in a cadence," she says. "Things seem to meter out. When I write a song, it automatically takes a melody in my head."

And if all that weren't enough, she calls herself "indomitably happy." Which just might be the secret to it all.