Shut Up and Drive is the title of a song written by Rivers Rutherford

Rivers Rutherford

Rivers Rutherford is an American country music songwriter. Active since the mid-1990s as a songwriter, he has penned several Number One country hits, including "Ain't Nothing 'bout You" by Brooks & Dunn, which was the Number One country song of 2001 according to Billboard...

, Annie Tate and Sam Tate, and recorded by American country music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 singer Chely Wright

Chely Wright

Richell Rene "Chely" Wright is an American country music artist and, starting in 2010, gay rights activist. On the strength of her debut album in 1994, the Academy of Country Music named her Top New Female Vocalist in 1995. Wright's first Top 40 country hit came in 1997 with "Shut Up and Drive"...

. It was the first single from her 1997 album Let Me In

Let Me In (album)

Let Me In mainly received positive reviews from critics. Country Standard Times Brian Walhert said that the album's first five songs were "masterfully crafted", calling the third track "Shut Up and Drive" to combine both "sympathy" and "quiet urgency". Walhert also praised the fourth track "Emma...

, her first album for MCA Nashville. The song brought Wright to the country top 40 for the first time, with a peak of #14 on Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

Hot Country Singles & Tracks (now Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales...

).

Critical reception

Brian Wahlert of Country Standard Time

Country Standard Time

Country Standard Time is a website dedicated to country music and related genres such as Bluegrass and Rockabilly. It provides news and musical reviews pertaining to the genre. It was established in 1992 by Jeffrey B. Remz as a print magazine, which was first published only in New England but went...

described the song favorably in his review of the album, saying that it "simmers with a combination of sympathy and quiet urgency until Wright wails demandingly on the chorus, 'I'm the voice you never listen to/And I had to break your heart to make you see.'"

Chart positions

With its #14 peak on the U.S. country singles charts, "Shut Up and Drive" is Wright's first top 40 country hit.

Chart (1997)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks	14
U.S. Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100	12
Canadian RPM Country Tracks	21