Goodbye Back" reached a Hot Country Songs peak of number seven in 1995. Its b-side, a duet with Stephanie Bentley titled "Heart Half Empty", peaked at number 21 in early 1996. "In Your Face" was the last single from What Mattered Most. This song was the least successful, charting for only two weeks and reaching number 63. The album included backing vocals from several artists on Epic or sister label Columbia Records, including Patty Loveless, Joe Diffie, Ron Wallace, and Gibson/Miller Band member Blue Miller. Doug Johnson, then the vice-president of artists and repertoire (A&R) of Epic's Nashville branch, produced the album and co-wrote "I Want My Goodbye Back". In addition to the singles, What Mattered Most included a cover of Jim Croce's "You Don't Mess Around with Jim". Another track, the Vince Gill and Don Schlitz composition "You Just Get One", was later recorded by Jeff Wood on his 1997 album Between the Earth and the Stars. Wood's rendition charted on Hot Country Songs that same year. "Heart Half Empty" later appeared on Bentley's 1996 album Hopechest, also issued on Epic. The music video for "What Mattered Most" was aired on CMT and the former TNN (The Nashville Network). Herndon promoted the album further by starting a tour in 1995. Michael McCall of New Country magazine rated the album three-and-a-half stars out of five, as he considered Herndon's vocal delivery "confident" but was more mixed toward the lyrical content of the songs. An uncredited review published by Billboard was favorable, stating, "With a rich, expressive voice that is equally suited to pensive ballads and rollicking, uptempo tunes, Herndon is one of country's most impressive newcomers." In early 1997, What Mattered Most was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of 500,000 copies. Executives of Sony Music Nashville, of which Epic was a division at the time, attributed the album's commercial success to a marketing strategy they employed at the time. Under this plan, albums by new artists were priced a dollar lower than the national average for sixty days after their release. These same executives also noted this strategy had been successful on albums by Wade Hayes and James House. 19961997: Living in a Moment In 1996, Herndon won the Male Star of Tomorrow, a fan-voted award from the TNN Music City News awards (now known as CMT Music Awards). His second album Living