RCA’s Nashville chief Joe Galante, one of Oslin’s biggest supporters, encouraged the idea to pattern the record after the first one, calling it “the next logical step for her career,” enlarging on the themes of the previous album.
Like its predecessor, “This Woman” sold more than a million copies by the end of 1989, although the first single, “Money,” brought an inauspicious start, topping out at a lackluster #13 on Billboard’s country singles chart. For the second single, RCA selected a cut off the album that seemingly broke away from the standard formula that dictated a hit. It was called “Hold Me.” This song departed from the normal A-B-A-B song form, contained large sections of recitation and ran more than four and a half minutes.
Despite the song’s unorthodox structure, Oslin (who Tom T. Hall once jokingly described as “everybody’s screwed-up sister”) pulled off a major coup with “Hold Me,” and the single trotted to the number one position of Billboard’s chart on January 7, 1989, becoming her third number one hit. Less than two months later, the song garnered K. T. a pair of Grammys: for “Best Country Vocal Performance by a Female” and “Best Country Song.”
Particularly intriguing is the fact that “Hold Me” is about marriage – yet, Oslin has never said “I do.” In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, K. T. Oslin (who composed nearly all of her material) explained that she wrote from a personal point of view – observing what her friends were going through and how they reacted to relationships, then trying to put it into terms that music fans would find interesting.
The “This Woman” album spawned two more Top Ten singles in 1989: “Hey Bobby” (#2) and the title track (#5). Oslin notched her fourth and last number one hit the following year, “Come Next Monday.”
