A Place in the Sun (1999)

On his fifth album A Place in the Sun, country's favorite underdog runs through a mishmash of touchy-feely emotions, teenage hormonal rushes, and bleeding-heart pledges, all to appeal to his legion of female fans. It's only when McGraw gets to the hard truth of relationships — in Deryl Dodd and Blake Chancey's honky-tonk ''She'll Have You Back'' — that he begins to look more like the man for the job, and less like a wimp who got lucky. B-