"The First Step" is a single by American country music artist Tracy Byrd. Released in 1994, it was the third single from the album No Ordinary Man

No Ordinary Man

No Ordinary Man is the second studio album by American country music artist Tracy Byrd. It features the singles "The First Step", "Lifestyles of the Not So Rich and Famous", "Watermelon Crawl" and "The Keeper of the Stars", all of which reached Top Five on the Hot Country Songs charts...

. The song reached #5 on the 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

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...

 chart.

Critical reception

Deborah Evans Price, of 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...

magazine reviewed the song favorably, saying that the song continues Byrd's pattern of two-step cliches, but that he manages to "inject more than enough spirit to get this one over." Price concludes that Byrd was "born to sing this stuff."

Chart performance

Chart (1994-1995)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks	5
Canadian RPM Country Tracks	4