So
2004 wasn’t an anomaly; if years were people, 2005 would look 2004 earnestly in
the eye and say “good job brother, I’m gonna keep on keepin’ on.” And that
brief interaction would be more poignant and meaningful than about 90% of the songs
that cheesed their way up to #1 in the twelve months to come.
The
weightless but engaging novelty of something like Blake Shelton’s “Some Beach”
isn’t going to ruin anyone’s day, even if it gets stuck in your head for the
majority of it. It’s easygoing and hummable and if it got four weeks at #1 that
speaks more to the paucity of competition than anything. Darryl Worley’s
“Awful, Beautiful Life” would seem like a good song if you didn’t understand
English; the dynamic beat and scrambling electric guitars with twangy touches
of fiddle and steel speaks well for the Nashville studio cats, but every fine
line between relatability and flat-out pandering gets artlessly kicked over.
Granted, that was becoming country music songwriting’s house style in the era,
but that doesn’t let Worley off the hook. He’d done better before, and his
shoehorned-in shoutout to the troops in Iraq landed somewhere between
gratuitous and cynical.
Brad
Paisley’s “Mud on the Tires” kind of trampled the relatable/pandering line too,
but at least it was packing a little charm and humor. Yeah, sure, country boys
and girls like 4x4 trucks and outdoorsy dates, why not write a song about it? So
much of the era’s hits just felt demographically engineered, and you couldn’t
help but hear the gears grinding. It seemed hardly anyone was trying to write
an emotionally resonant classic, and when they did you’d usually end up with
something like Rascal Flatts and “Bless the Broken Road.” Intricately pretty,
lots of pious greeting-card poetry about love and gratitude, a kernel of
emotional truth coated in so many layers of sugar you just can’t stomach it
anymore.
Josh
Gracin was a marketing dream in the context of the era, a wholesomely handsome young
dude who was both an American Idol contestant and a US Marine when the
former was the hottest thing on TV and pro-military sentiment was across the
board. They didn’t go overboard trying to paint him as a war hero (sounds like
his mostly-stateside stint was uneventful) but he did have a scruffy
masculinity not every show-choir kid can muster. “Nothin’ to Lose” is the only
time we’re going to need to mention him; I had to go back to remind myself what
song it was, because the rapid-fire cornpone lyrics kind of overshadow the
hook, but yeah this thing was everywhere. The video was set in a high school
with youthful-looking actors making it pretty clear who the target demographic
was.
Craig
Morgan had a much longer military career and was on the verge of middle age by
the time his country music career took off. He’d been an independent-label
success story, which was rare in Nashville at the time, but bore little of the
scrappy individualism that “indie” implies; “What I Love About a Sunday” was
pretty par for his course, an earnest checklist ballad about wholesome churchgoing
suburban domestic bliss. Nice things in practice, it’s just really hard to
write a compelling song about so Morgan (and songwriters Adam Dorsey and Mark
Narmore) settled for reminding everyone their life was swell (or at least could
be if they went to church). I can easily buy that Morgan is a tough, honorable
guy who’s lived some life. But this and his other chart hits indicate he had a
hell of a time turning that into compelling music in an era when that was
highly optional anyway.
That
was Morgan’s last #1, but Kenny Chesney was going to be one of the genre’s
defining dudes for years to come, for better or worse. Stuff like “Anything But
Mine” make a pretty good case for him as a purveyor of relatable suburban fantasy;
a young-summer-romance fable written by the excellently-named Scooter Carusoe, it’s
not exactly full of depth or surprises but there’s a hearty Springsteen pulse
bubbling under some nicely detailed lyrics that make you either remember when
your life was like this or wish that it at some point was. Brooks & Dunn
were similarly determined not to be consigned to ‘90s nostalgia, and despite
the unexpected chamber-music intro “It’s Getting Better All the Time” put
Ronnie Dunn’s timeless twang to emotionally resonant use. The blend of
Broadway-ish melodrama and hard-country sentiments has certainly been done much
worse. Given the field, it may well have been the best #1 of the year.
Jo
Dee Messina was about to plummet off the charts; “My Give a Damn’s Busted” has
a little sincere kick to it that was becoming a rare commodity by then, but
feistiness wasn’t enough for a foothold in an era where female voices seemed to
be getting gradually crowded out. Keith Urban’s smooth, genre-blurred take on
country music was coming to be the predominant strain, but at least he had the
good taste to pluck a Rodney Crowell tune like “Making Memories of Us.” It’s a
bit fluffy by Crowell standards yet also a little edgy by Urban standards, and
better than anything Rascal Flatts was coughing up around that time. “Fast Cars
and Freedom” was upbeat and seemed to at least be reaching for an echo of
classic heartland rock like Bob Seger, but just couldn’t tap into that sort of
greasy authenticity. Toby Keith, by contrast, could go on effortlessly about
bar fights and hot twins on “As Good As I Once Was” and sound like a laid-back
working-class hero. Seemingly believing himself to be quite the badass but
leaving some room for self-deprecating humor, he was fun in the mellow lane he
made for himself after easing out of the saber-rattling-military-song one.
Faith
Hill was a superstar at this point but determined to let everyone know she was
still a down-to-earth “Mississippi Girl,” just like Jennifer Lopez was still
Jenny From the Block. “Well I spent a few weeks in California/They put my face
on the big movie screen/But that don’t mean I’ve forgotten where I came
from/That’s just me chasing dreams …” I don’t know why anyone listened to this
more than once, but I guess she’d earned her spot by then and it’d take more
than a heaping dose of faux-folksy insipidness to knock her off of it. If
anyone else other than Brooks & Dunn had put out a song called “Play
Something Country” in this era it would’ve come off as pot-and-kettle bullshit,
but it’s not like they were skimping on the twang even if some of their lyrics
were starting to land on the dire side of gimmicky.
Country-pop
isn’t inherently bad, of course; craft, taste, and sincerity can go a long way,
and Sara Evans could muster up enough of all of the above especially with
writers as talented as Radney Foster and George Ducas in the tank. “A Real Fine
Place to Start” is a real fine song to listen to, sunny and optimistic without
feeling emptyheaded or pandering. “Something To Be Proud Of” by Montgomery
Gentry wasn’t as finely-calibrated – it does sound kind of focus-grouped by a
Fox News panel in its nods to small-town working-class patriotism – but it’s got
a big, hearty hook to it and mostly speaks to the nobler side of modern
American masculinity. Others have done much worse with the notion.
Keith
Urban rolled out another busy mid-tempo number called “Better Life.” Pleasant
enough and all, it just sort of blended in with his other similar-sounding
songs from that years as well as the glut of contemporary tunes meant to sound
like they were replicating common domestic conversations among the listener
base with precious little poetic license. But enough people saw themselves in
it to keep it at #1 for six solid weeks. A couple years later he’d be married
to one of the biggest movie stars in the world (Nicole Kidman, if you’ve never
noticed them on the front row of several dozen awards shows) and these stabs at
regular-joe striving would get even less convincing. Meanwhile, Dierks Bentley,
the memorably-named kid of a Mississippi WWII vet, could do the whole
scruffily-relatable thing pretty well: “Come a Little Closer” was a
convincingly warm come-on of a song, something that could make the girls take
heart and the guys take notes. It was a great fit for his baritone twang, a
simple notion done simply well.
I
guess it’s too bad this song didn’t close out the year on a promising note;
instead we got the kind-of-anonymous Joe Nichols hamming it up on “Tequila
Makes Her Clothes Fall Off,” which never really gets more amusing than its own
title. Dierks did his damnedest to yank the #1 spot back after one week of that
mess, but then got edged out for the last week of 2005 by Billy Currington and
“Must Be Doin’ Something Right.” Much as I don’t like that bland bit of
devotional country-pop, in the longer run he’d have better tunes that at least
tried to keep a bit of folksy wit and wisdom in play on country radio. And with
occasional exceptions, that’d have to be about as good as it was gonna get.
THE
TREND
Woof.
I mean, “Some Beach” almost cracked the top five in the ranking, and some of
those titles down there look like they’re retroactively mocking any remaining
enthusiasm I had for mainstream country music. “It’s Getting Better All the
Time,” “As Good As I Once Was,” “A Real Fine Place to Start,” “Something To Be
Proud Of,” “Must Be Doing Something Right,” and perhaps most gallingly “Play
Something Country.” It’s not, you’re not, it’s not, it’s not, you’re not, and how
about this: just calling something “country” and throwing in a few regional
signifiers or nods to working class life doesn’t make you the heir to Merle
Haggard. Not everything was terrible, but nothing was really great either, and
there’s not a ton of motivation to change when something like “Bless the Broken
Road” or “What I Love About Sunday” could hang it at #1 for a month or more. It
was very much getting to a point where anyone that wanted something compelling
was well-advised to look elsewhere.
THE
RANKING
It’s
Getting Better All the Time – Brooks & Dunn
Come
a Little Closer – Dierks Bentley
Making
Memories of Us – Keith Urban
As
Good As I Once Was – Toby Keith
A
Real Fine Place to Start – Sara Evans
Some
Beach – Blake Shelton
My
Give a Damn’s Busted – Jo Dee Messina
Something
To Be Proud Of – Montgomery Gentry
Anything
But Mine – Kenny Chesney
Mud
on the Tires – Brad Paisley
Must
Be Doing Something Right – Billy Currington
Tequila
Makes Her Clothes Fall Off – Joe Nichols
Play
Something Country – Brooks & Dunn
Nothin’
to Lose – Josh Gracin
Awful,
Beautiful Life – Darryl Worley
Mississippi
Girl – Faith Hill
That’s
What I Love About Sunday – Craig Morgan
Bless
the Broken Road – Rascal Flatts
DOWN THE ROAD ...
We're having to really think outside the box to find covers of songs this recent, but that can be its own kind of intriguing. I'm not sure how else I'd stumble across someone like Jajai Singsit, a (the only?) country singer from the Manipur region of India. I'm not well-traveled enough to know if there are any good honky tonks around there for him to book gigs at but the depth of his country music appreciation seems to have taken him well beyond sort-of-recent Keith Urban hits and into the catalogs of all-timers like George Strait, Don Williams and Jim Reeves. I don't know much else about the guy or how he happened to get into this, but he does have a lovely, resonant voice (mostly reminescent of Reeves himself) and even a pretty convincing twang. If I'm ever around Manipur I'll try to catch a set, but in the meantime here's him covering the Rodney Crowell-penned 2005 Keith Urban smash "Memories of Us."
So
though I’m not crazy about the trends going around as we ease into the mid
aughts, I’d still call it a mixed bag. If I had a mix CD with the first nine
songs in the ranking for 2004 I’d probably give it a nostalgia listen now and
then, if I could find a CD player nowadays. If I had a mix CD with the last
nine songs I’d probably intentionally break any existing CD players I had.
And
now we’re at the point that with every passing year the percentage of songs I don’t
remember is roughly matching the number of songs I actually like. “Have you
forgotten,” Darryl Worley might ask, and I’d say yes but with good reason.
Kenny Chesney and “There Goes My Life” held over from 2003 for the whole month
of January, bland and wispy as ever, perhaps inspiring a New Year’s resolution
to change the station. But then Alan Jackson puts out the tender, sincere
“Remember When” and you do sort of remember when country radio seemed relatable
and engaging without crossing fully over into simplistic and pandering. Or
maybe even propagandizing, like Toby Keith with “American Soldier.” Don’t get
me wrong, I think he meant every word when he sang it and had legit gratitude
and respect for US troops. But the mainstream radio business making sure
everyone hears it every hour on the hour feels like an overplayed hand no
matter the original intent.
Presumably
they played the hell out of Tim McGraw’s “Watch the Wind Blow By” too if it
spent two weeks at #1, but I don’t recall it and after a listen my memory
remains stubbornly unjogged. Not a bad tune, it’s got a little country-soul
pulse to it and some decent lovey-dovey lyrics. But it’s hardly unforgettable
and maybe a sign that I was checking out as a listener around this era. I do
remember Kenny Chesney teaming up with non-country Kid Rock cohort Uncle
Kracker for the beachy midtempo party tune “When the Sun Goes Down,” but I
recall it more from people complaining about it than actually hearing it. Folks
were expressing suspicion at the idea of dragging in B-listers from other
genres, as if Kenny Chesney was incapable of cranking out genreless fluff all
by himself; really, just taken on its own lightweight merits, it’s far from the
worst song of the year.
I
do recall Keith Urban’s “You’ll Think of Me” fairly well, seems it was on
constantly, it’s a slow one but still hooky enough to get stuck in your head.
Not much meat on the bone, but Urban’s subtle delivery is seldom hard to listen
to. “Mayberry,” by Rascal Flatts, is another story. Lead singer Gary LeVox’s tenor
could get outta hand quick, sandpaper to the ears even if he’s technically
hitting the notes, sort of like a country version of Rush. I don’t know who
this song was supposed to be for, invoking the fictional town from The Andy
Griffith Show as a framework for a bunch of clunky, insipid lines that
could’ve been about pretty much any small town ever … were fans of that show
even listening to mainstream country radio anymore? To me it seemed like RF was
pretty much always pitched to the teen girl audience who didn’t even remember Matlock,
much less vintage Griffith. But maybe that strategy hadn’t kicked in yet for
them.
If
you were wishing they’d get back to giving female artists a chance, you may
have wanted your wish back with newcomer Gretchen Wilson and “Redneck Woman.” On
one hand, she could sing her ass off, and befitting her brash approach she
looked and dressed more like the barmaid at a biker bar than the Disney
princesses you tend to end up with nowadays. But the song was kind of
unfortunate, a string of shout-outs to familiar brands and people (Wal Mart, Bocephus,
Barbie) that felt way less authentic than Wilson herself probably was. The
sort-of-new duo Montgomery Gentry leaned pretty hard into the brash shitkicker
aesthetic and often did it in service of some pretty good material (“She
Couldn’t Change Me,” for example); they were about a half-decade into their
chart life when “If You Ever Stop Loving Me” scored them their first #1 for
some reason. It’s a big thumpy track with a lot of big guitars dueling it out,
there’s just not much hook or lyrical depth to distinguish it. Toby Keith could’ve
well been singing about a Gretchen Wilson-esque party gal on “Whiskey Girl,” with
lines like “she needs somethin’ with a little more edge and a little more pain”
perhaps coming on a little stronger than Keith even intended. A lot of that
gentlemanly George Strait stuff seemed to be going out the window in favor of
lots of self-styled redneck attitude.
Not
always, though. Tim McGraw didn’t have a perfect batting average when it came
to picking material, but he was more likely than most to go with a thoughtful,
mature number like “Live Like You Were Dying.” A memorable tale of cancer
scares and bucket-list dreams and renewed appreciation for life, it’d probably
hit harder if I was hearing it for the first time in my current middle age, but
even as a relative pup I respected the craft and sincerity. Canadian cowgirl
Terri Clark took another ride to the top with the upbeat, sort-of-amusing
“Girls Lie Too,” a bit of cheeky pushback against us smug bumbling dudes in the
audience. Reba McEntire of all people popped back in for a week with “Somebody”
– hey, we haven’t been great about promoting new women, but turns out we had
some good ones right here all along! But maybe the shipment of singles didn’t
make it to Bryan-College Station because again, I don’t remember this song at
all. It sounds more Broadway than country and hinges around some awkward rhymes
and plot twists. It’s like a four-minute romantic comedy that still somehow
feels too long. McGraw boomeranged back around her one week on top and held
down #1 for the rest of the summer.
Keith
Urban scored again with a busy mid-tempo number called “Days Go By” that I
guess I always assumed was one of his other similar-sounding busy mid-tempo
numbers. Some of this stuff makes you wonder how many people actively loved
this stuff as opposed to just accepting it; despite Urban’s chops, it’s all
pretty weightless and indistinct. Just a vague “live life to the fullest” message
that barely distracts, much less inspires. Sara Evans’ “Suds in the Bucket” had
more lyrical charm and a more memorable hook, not to mention some big tasty
doses of fiddle and steel guitar and lots of telegenic camera flirting in the
video (yes I had a crush on her, sue me). Folks were having a breezy good time
until George Strait sauntered in and went memorably dour with “I Hate
Everything,” which may well have reflected how he was starting to feel about
this chart. But really, it’s a song about a beleaguered divorcee cathartically
spilling his guts to a stranger in a bar who’s immediately inspired to go home
and mend fences with his hopefully-just-temporarily-pissed-off wife. Though it
ends on a hopeful note and doesn’t go to the rip-your-heart out emotive
extremes of, say, “Chiseled in Stone,” it was just nice to have someone dishing
up unmistakable sad country songs in the top spot (and really unsurprising who
it ended up being).
Motormouthed
cheesemeister Phil Vassar swooped in again with “In a Real Love,” which sounds
like a fast-talking, slightly retooled theme song to some ’80 family sitcom
nobody remembers. His next single was called “I’ll Take That As A Yes (The Hot
Tub Song),” it didn’t earn #1 consideration but you can certainly go listen to
it if you want to. Not to be outdone, Lonestar came along and outshit the bed
with what may well be the dad-country nadir: “Mr. Mom.” Not to be associated
with the perfectly-acceptable Michael Keaton comedy film (Keaton should sue
their ass), I’m sure the song thought it was pretty damn clever with its tale of
a bumbling dad laid off from work who takes over childcare so his wife can
bring home the bacon for a while. And yeah I guess there probably were some
listeners who chuckled and said “ain’t that the truth?” or words to that effect
at the lines about Pampers in the dryer or melted crayons or Barney etc. but I
don’t see why the hell anyone would want to hear this more than once unless the
members of Lonestar owed them money. And even then it’s not worth it.
Gary
Allan singing about two young lovers with “Nothing On But the Radio” isn’t the
most original wordplay you’ll likely hear but it sounds like the absolute soul
of wit compared to some of the crap piled around it. Plus it’s got a nice
little groove and Allan singing it; by 2004 standards it’s aces. Tim McGraw
came shufflin’ back in with “Back When,” a stack of folksy one-liners yearning
for a simpler time that just rings a little false coming from someone who was a
bona-fide superstar by then. “I’m readin’ Street Slang for Dummies/Cause they
put pop in my country,” McGraw sings, and nice a guy as he seems to be that’s
kind of like pissing down your neck and telling you it’s rainin’. Just because
he never managed to de-twang his voice doesn’t mean that he wasn’t also at
least sometimes trying to cram as much synthetic gloss into a “country” song as
whoever this particular song might’ve been pointing fingers at. Maybe I’m just
thinking too hard about all this. I like some of his stuff, I don’t mean to be
a grouch but the mid-aughts are starting to get to me kind of like they did
back then.
The
year ended with Blake Shelton doing a pretend-grouch act on “Some Beach.” Yes
it’s supposed to sound like you’re pronouncing “sumbitch,” and yes that’s about
as funny as it gets, but it doesn’t overplay its hand and it is fairly tuneful
and charming. Guess we can talk about that in 2005 where it spent most of its
#1 run. The way things are going it might be the greatest song of that
particular year.
THE
TREND?
I
don’t actually hate everything, but man it’s getting harder to love any of it. Bless
George Strait and Alan Jackson for hanging in there; at this point it’d been
four years since they recorded the lament/critique “Murder on Music Row” and
though it hadn’t gotten them ridden out of town on a rail by a bunch of
ingrates, it also didn’t seem to change enough hearts or minds to affect the
top of the charts much. The wholesome suburban sheen of it all – again, that
jokey dad-country stuff is the worst - seemed to only occasionally break
for bursts of half-hearted rebellion or actual messy emotion. The previous year
they’d had to break the aging likes of Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffett out to
give things much of a spark; this year the go-to collaborator was [checks
notes] Uncle Kracker. If you were into wit and soul and heartache this not only
wasn’t your year, it was one that made you wonder if you’d ever see it again
without looking to back when.
THE
RANKING
I
Hate Everything – George Strait
Remember
When – Alan Jackson
Suds
in the Bucket – Sara Evans
Live
Like You Were Dying – Tim McGraw
Girls
Lie Too – Terri Clark
American
Soldier – Toby Keith
Nothing
On But the Radio – Gary Allan
Watch
the Wind Blow By – Tim McGraw
Some
Beach – Blake Shelton
When
the Sun Goes Down – Kenny Chesney & Uncle Kracker
Whiskey
Girl – Toby Keith
Back
When – Tim McGraw
Redneck
Woman – Gretchen Wilson
You’ll
Think of Me – Keith Urban
There
Goes My Life – Kenny Chesney
Days
Go By – Keith Urban
If
You Ever Stop Loving Me – Montgomery Gentry
Somebody
– Reba McEntire
In
a Real Love – Phil Vassar
Mayberry
– Rascal Flatts
Mr. Mom - Lonestar
DOWN THE ROAD ...
We're well into the phase where any vaguely high-profile versions of most of these #1s are gonna be performances by semi-celebs from TV singing competitions and/or YouTube channels (there's definitely some overlap there). Likeable young dude Jackson Snelling is one of those ... shortly after Toby Keith's way-too-young passing, he paid timely tribute with his take on "American Soldier." Very nice version, and a bit of a hill to climb tackling a song so closely associated with not only a famous singer but the most famous side of his persona. Between his vocal talents, early start, and the solid production value on these videos, it's not hard to imagine Snelling having his own #1 one of these days.
The
early 2000s was an odd time in America. I guess a lot of eras were, but I was
actually old enough to remember this one as an employed, news-conscious adult.
Pre-millennial tension was violently replaced by post-9/11 anger, grief, and
paranoia (but also possibly the closest thing to brief national unity we’d had
before or since). An increasing chunk of society was on the internet, downloads
of varying legality were starting to encroach on music sales, political
discourse was on a sharp upward curve towards nastier, we all had a universe of
information (and misinformation) at our fingertips … it was a pretty uneasy
time, and 2003’s #1 rundown reflects that in ways that were often obvious then
and have in some cases become clearer in retrospect.
George
Strait led into the year with a second week for “She’ll Leave You With a
Smile,” a comforting throwback to a slightly simpler time. Fun fact: Strait is
so damn prolific that this was the second time he’d released a song called
“She’ll Leave You With a Smile” … there was an unrelated, not-overly-similar song
with the same title by a different writer on his ’97 album. At this point
Strait was often one of the few folks to hit #1 that already came with some
built-in nostalgia; sometimes the only one in a year, but this time he’d be one
of several. Speaking of nostalgia … “19 Somethin’” was explicitly crafted
around the idea of recent nostalgia by songwriters David Lee and Chris DuBois
and delivered by the reliably anonymous Mark Wills. It wasn’t Wills’ first #1 but
it was a rare trip to the top ten and a surprise smash with six weeks at #1.
The song’s more a clever parlor trick than anything that’d stick to your ribs –
one verse chronicles ‘70s touchstones like Farrah Fawcett and Stretch
Armstrong, the next checks off ‘80s stuff like Daisy Duke and parachute pants –
but all the same it fed a hunger for earlier days by mostly sticking with the
low-stakes amusements with occasional shoutouts to deceased rock stars or
astronauts thrown in. It wasn’t deep but it certainly spoke to something.
“The
Baby” by Blake Shelton was shooting for more emotional depth; it was
big-production but unmistakably country, both in delivery and in its commitment
to both melodrama and realism. It’s built around a thinly sketched tale of a favored
youngest son who lives a sort of unrooted life but comes rushing back home to
his mom’s deathbed, but there’s no real moral or hook to it; one of his
brothers calls him “rotten to the core” but is that some affectionate joke or
real disdain? Doesn’t seem like the protagonist did anything wrong other than
take some jobs out of state and bounce around a little career-wise. It feels
kind of like a verse or two was cut for length; as it is, it just doesn’t earn
the tears it’s clearly gunning for.
Gary
Allan’s “Man to Man” was a much lighter slice of life, a groovy little two-step
number following a conversation between a man and his lady’s ne’er-do-well ex. Allan
had been in the mix since the mid-‘90s, mid-level as a star but a favorite
among discerning fans: he had sort of a gritty integrity about him, a taste in
material that drew him to medium-sized hits like “Her Man” and “Smoke Rings in
the Dark” that would hold up better than most of the stuff that hit bigger
around the same time. His persistence was finally getting rewarded. Whereas the
Dixie Chicks’ resistance was about to get considerably less rewarded, unless
you’re of the “no such thing as bad publicity!” mindset.
“Travelin’
Soldier” was from the pen of masterful Texas songwriter Bruce Robison, who was
at the time the brother-in-law of band member Emily Robison. It was one of the
centerpieces on Home, an ambitiously stripped-down album the Chicks
released in implied protest of the trend towards loud, shallow high-gloss
country pop. The song was a tenderly sympathetic number about young love
disrupted by the Vietnam War; given that the USA was entering into a
controversial and messy war in Iraq, the parallel was not hard to draw
(although the song was written well before all of this). Despite the album’s
acoustic modesty, the Chicks’ previous albums had catapulted them into an
arena-level act internationally, hence the big show in London where lead singer
Natalie Maines made a sentence or two worth of commentary on then-prez George
W. Bush and the war effort in general. Essentially she said she was ashamed to call
GWB a fellow Texan, it didn’t go much deeper than that.
Had
the Chicks been an act in almost any other genre I think this would’ve blown
over pretty quickly. Or maybe even if 9/11 didn’t still loom so large in the
rearview. Or, honestly, had the president been a Democrat. But some of the nation’s
conservative elements had used the aftermath of 9/11 and the changing media
landscape (including burgeoning propaganda wings on Fox News and right-wing
talk radio) to really circle the wagons, and Nashville was fertile ground for
this sort of stuff. The town and the business leaned heavily toward the sort of
affluent evangelical Caucasians that tended to be conservative and patriotic,
and unlike the rock and pop worlds international artists (and, to some extent,
international fans) were a secondary concern at best. Country music could
market itself, explicitly or otherwise, as music for Americans by Americans,
with the whole white/patriotic/conservative/Christian thing more or less
implied.
So
the industry was disinclined to provide much defense when right-wing pundits
pounced, ginning up outrage amongst their audiences, fueling
everything from death threats to album-burning demonstrations to concert venue
protests (the Chicks still had a lot of stops left on the Home tour).
The #1 single and the rest of their music was immediately yanked at most
mainstream country radio stations, either out of righteous indignation or just
to avoid public outcry. It’s ironic that it was a sympathetic song about
a young soldier, because now the band (and Maines in particular) were widely being
painted as unforgivably anti-military. Maines & co. could argue that opposing
a questionable military operation is sort of pro-troops – is risking soldiers’
lives worth this particular goal? – but there wasn’t much point in arguing at
all. A decade and a half or so later most of the conservative media and fanbase
would chuck the Bush legacy under the bus anyway in favor of amped-up Trump-era
belligerence, but I doubt the Chicks grudge has subsided much. They’d mostly
have to rely on the NPR crowd going forward, making do with various side
projects and the occasional reunion album or tour. They remained a big-money
draw but a big chunk of their potential audience was gone forever.
NOTE: For anyone who'd like to read further on the Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith, and various other artists who stoked the political climate of country music down the years, I strongly recommend this book, Rednecks & Bluenecks by Chris Willman. It's remarkably well written, researched, and balanced in the sense that I didn't come out of it feeling like Willman was leaning too hard on an agenda or trying to muzzle any of the artists he had access to and interest in. Great read.
Joe
Nichols, who was sort of like a twangier Mark Wills, was considerably less of
an attention-getter but certainly on his A-game with the melancholy but
easy-to-like baritone ramble of “Brokenheartsville.” Just a simple tune with a
memorable hook delivered with a bit of twangy conviction; what a concept.
Darryl Worley was good at that sort of thing too, and had gotten some decent
notice as one of the brighter and more traditionalist new artists in the genre
but he took a big right-field swing with “Have You Forgotten?” Unlike with the extremely
recent Chicks brouhaha, the song itself was intended to be a button-pushing
rally cry, raking the 9/11 coals and shaking listeners by the shoulders with a
plea to not drift into complacent political correctness (yes, of course he
rhymes “forgotten” with “Bin Laden”). Folks within the business were reluctant
to critique it, lest they be stuck in watch-your-back mode alongside the Chicks,
but outsiders widely saw it as a cynical attempt to go along with the government’s
attempts to use vague links between terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan and
the Iraq government to justify an invasion of the latter. Worley co-wrote it,
stood by its explicit message, and minimized its implicit ones, so I’m not
gonna call the guy cynical even if I didn’t care for the song. Enough people
considered it their patriotic duty to listen to it over and over that it spent
six weeks at #1. Unlike Toby Keith, the patriotic hit didn’t ensconce him in
the forefront of the era’s country artists, even briefly. More like Lee
Greenwood, it sort of overshadowed everything else he’d done or would do, but
unlike Greenwood the message wasn’t vague enough to book a battleship gig every
Fourth of July.
If
you were looking for something to lighten things up then tough shit. Randy
Travis was almost a nostalgia act at this point, no #1s since ’94 and not much country
chart action in general, but he’d been dabbling in gospel too and more or less
combined the two with his final #1 “Three Wooden Crosses.” A little morality
tale with a plot twist involving multiple deaths, it mostly sounds lovely but
stumbles over having to use the word “hooker” repeatedly to describe one of the
main characters. I realize that “whore” would’ve sounded meaner and never made
it on the radio and “prostitute” doesn’t fit the meter, so I guess even a voice
as distinctively rich as Travis’ can’t really make any of them work. Or I guess
it could in the moment, because this was his 16th trip to the top at
a point where the industry had written off a guy Garth Brooks himself once
lauded as a savior of country music. Brooks himself was contentedly resting on
his laurels at this point in a self-imposed temporary retirement, possibly born
in part out of a savvy desire to avoid having to struggle for airplay and
relevance the way some of his heroes had to after their biggest moments passed.
Travis was in the trenches trying to recreate a spot for himself, reportedly
going through some serious personal struggles that probably weren’t helping. In
retrospect his gifts for warmth and subtlety were conspicuous in their absence
from a mainstream that didn’t know what it was missing.
Diamond
Rio were also all about the death, and also on their final #1 with “I Believe.”
A gentle, sober meditation on a deceased love one’s lingering presence, it was
pretty easy to tie this one in on residual 9/11 grief and a possible impending
wave of military widows. Then again, grief has an unfortunately timeless
relevance to it. It was a good song, good for one last wallow before things
took a turn for the upbeat. The first one was provided by Toby Keith and – get
this – Willie Nelson! If Randy Travis was starting to seem like a throwback by
’03, Willie must’ve seemed like an outright dinosaur. But then again he’d never
really faded from the public consciousness: much like Johnny Cash or Dolly
Parton, he was an icon, and he was more accessible than most icons with his
constant touring of mid-sized venues, frequent low-key releases of new material
for his fans, appearances in commercials and movie cameos, conspicuous
marijuana advocacy etc. So it’s not like Keith had to rescue him from obscurity
to record “Beer For My Horses.” To the uninitiated who wonder what the hell the
song could possibly be about, it was built around a one-liner from an old 1975
action movie called Bite the Bullet (“whiskey for my men and beer for my
horses!”) and morphed into a song about righteous men resolving to mow down the
bad guys wrecking society. It’s not specifically a pro-war song but could
certainly be taken that way, in the context of the times and Keith’s public
persona; if it was released today it’d hit pretty different as an implied
anthem about taking the culture wars to the point of public violence (let’s not
do this). Having Nelson aboard was a pretty smart move in retrospect, not only
because few country artists are more worthy of love and respect but also
because Willie’s peaceful public image sanded off a lot of the implied
obnoxiousness. For what it’s worth, as of this writing Nelson still works it
into his solo setlists pretty often, so one can assume he’s proud of it, and
not just because he hadn’t had a #1 since 1989 or because he set a record for
the oldest artist to feature on a #1 country hit at 70. Not my favorite Willie
song, or even my favorite Toby Keith song, but that’s good enough for me. Six
weeks at #1, plus in the music video they take down a freakin’ serial killer.
Lighthearted fun!
I’m
less forgiving about Lonestar and “My Front Porch Looking In.” This is more of
that wholesome suburbanite family-friendly tripe that makes me want to push
every minivan on the planet off a cliff (not with actual people in them of
course) because this is what I assume is playing on their radios. Lines about
carrot tops and sippy cups can go straight to hell. I know us “discerning
listener” types bitch about the shallow objectifications of bro-country but I kind
of blame this sort of dippy dad-country for its existence. Nobody was ever
going to listen to this shit at a party, somebody had to do something different
even if they weren’t gonna do it especially well. Brooks & Dunn were fairly
wholesome and straightforward too on “Red Dirt Road,” but they were typically
tasteful enough to make any approach come off at least acceptable (give or take
the occasional “Rock My World Little Country Girl”). Plus I like the song’s big
Bob Seger-ish sweep and its simple but evenhanded central hook: “there’s life
at both ends of that red dirt road.” It’s cool to be proud of where you came
from but there’s a big wide world out there and your way ain’t the only way. Let’s
bring that mindset back.
And
then you get “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” with Alan Jackson and
influence/guest star Jimmy Buffett. Buffett has come up several times in this
column as an influence and contemporary but not as a #1 artist himself. He sort
of lived – nay, thrived – in between genres for decades, kind of a folk
singer-songwriter who gradually morphed into a sunny one-man brand. His
signature song “Margaritaville” ended up #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart
back in 1977 and occasionally he’d crack the country Top 40, but chart hits were
largely irrelevant to a guy on his way to becoming a literal billionaire.
Because Buffett’s music – which to these ears is occasionally great, often
good, other times pretty disposable but at least on-brand – lends itself really
well to merchandising and building a whole little subculture around. It’s sort
of like the Grateful Dead except with more day jobs in the crowd, often fairly
affluent ones that make boats and tropical vacations and pricey concert tickets
affordable. Buffett, figuring out early on where his bread was buttered, quickly
drifted into making nearly every song on every album tropical/beachy/etc. in
sound and/or subject matter to the point where for the rest of our lives any
song that involves a white guy singing about beaches or islands or frozen
drinks is going to invite Jimmy Buffett comparisons. Alan Jackson’s
hard-country bonafides are rarely in question, but he was apparently at least a
bit of a Parrothead on the side because he knew just who to call when he wrote
a party-hearty anthem about justifying having a drink anytime you damn well
felt like it. I got sick of it eventually but it was fun. #1 for eight weeks,
plus you see posters or signs or whatever in bars all the time with the title (although
I think the expression pre-dates the tune).
Dierks
Bentley managed to score a shorter-lived #1 with his debut single “What Was I
Thinkin’.” A scruffily handsome youngster with a pleasantly twangy baritone, he
was hardly the next Johnny Cash but he at least gave the vibe of somebody who
could help steer things back in a more earnestly countrified direction (the
video, that bit off the then-recent film Memento, was fun too). Jackson
& Buffett took back over for an encore week and then reliable-by-now Tim
McGraw swung in with “Real Good Man.” The hook seemed like kind of a groaner to
me back then (“I may be a real bad boy/but baby I’m a real good man”) and
hasn’t enriched much with age, but I assume this one was more for the ladies
anyhow. Gary Allan scored again on his mini-roll with the sincerely touching
“Tough Little Boys,” a rumination on how a lot of that macho b.s. falls by the
wayside when fatherhood brings out the tender heart in you. Well-observed,
well-sung, and as long as you don’t start dropping lines about f’n sippy cups
we’re good.
Keith
Urban continued to establish his spot in the new guard with “Who Wouldn’t Want
to Be Me,” which had the same breezy, kind-of-busy country-pop vibe as his
“Somebody Like You” breakthrough. Seems like a nice dude and can shred
admirably on the guitar, but it’s hard for his songs to not kind of run
together for me; I like him better on ballads with a little more breathing
room. Toby Keith continued his new America’s-buddy persona with “I Love This
Bar,” an ambling little slice-of-life describing the spectrum of personalities
welcome in his favorite watering hole. For someone that amped up the
belligerence in service of his art and career now and then, it really was kind
of a nice message and probably an industry-approved allegory on what they
wanted to see: folks of all walks of life feeling welcome to buy country
records and listen to country stations. So not a totally altruistic message,
but a friendly one nonetheless. Keith would eventually franchise the song title
into an actual bar, albeit not to Margaritaville-level success.
Kenny
Chesney closed out the year with “There Goes My Life,” another entry in the
dad-country genre, this time an achingly earnest number about a young man
worried fatherhood will wreck his vibe until he quickly grows into being a doting
dad wondering how it all slipped away so fast. Pleasant enough, relatable to
much of the audience, but the then-youthful (and still kind of perpetually
youthful, somehow) Chesney just sounded out of his depth on this one. It was a
dad-country sort of year; it looks like they sort of forgot to invite any women
to the party, and the only ones that showed up got bounced out pretty damn
completely.
THE
TREND?
Dudes.
Wholesome dudes that like to drink but manage to do it free of mayhem and
regret in friendly locations. Dudes who only really get mad when it’s
patriotic-mad or delve into their emotions when they’re talking about their kids.
Dudes who are dads or aspire to be so. Almost no women, although these dudes
sound like they treat them with respect unless they badmouth their president or
something. Look, I’m not putting the Chicks in the top spot as a statement; free
speech never means you’re free from public pushback or consequences, and I
don’t reflexively fault anyone who thought they were wrong to the point they
didn’t want to listen to them anymore. But I do think the outcry was excessive
and ginned up more by cynical opportunists than sincere objectors. And it's all
too bad, because that Home album – even more so than the Dixie Chicks’
previous work – spoke to something both more ambitious and more rooted than
most of their peers were dishing up. If their career continued apace, I’m not
saying they would’ve changed the course of recent country music history, but they
might’ve contributed mightily to carving out a more mature, introspective space
in it where others could thrive. Instead they inadvertently helped establish
that maybe mainstream country music was only for certain kinds of people. Maybe
the crowd in Toby Keith’s beloved bar wasn’t as diverse as he liked to pretend.
THE
RANKING
Travelin’
Soldier – The Dixie Chicks
Tough
Little Boys – Gary Allan
Brokenheartsville
– Joe Nichols
It’s
Five O’Clock Somewhere – Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett
Red
Dirt Road – Brooks & Dunn
Beer
for My Horses – Toby Keith with Willie Nelson
What
Was I Thinkin’ – Dierks Bentley
Man
to Man – Gary Allan
I
Love This Bar – Toby Keith
Three
Wooden Crosses – Randy Travis
I
Believe – Diamond Rio
Who
Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me – Keith Urban
19
Somethin’ – Mark Willis
Real
Good Man – Tim McGraw
The
Baby – Blake Shelton
There
Goes My Life – Kenny Chesney
Have
You Forgotten? – Darryl Worley
My
Front Porch Lookin’ In – Lonestar
DOWN THE ROAD ...
When the Dixie Chicks' country radio career was struck down in the middle of "Travelin' Soldier"'s run at the charts, the enraged segments of the listenership weren't exactly ready to embrace the irony of their current single being awash in sympathy for the military ... they just wanted them gone. But at least around Texas, I know a few stations that weren't beholden to ClearChannel or other corporate masters managed a little workaround by playing Austin-based songwriter Bruce Robison's still-fairly-recent original version of the song. Robison's sister-in-law Emily was a Dixie Chick as well but I guess the whole extended family wasn't excommunicated. Not for occasional lack of trying ... I do recall a Panhandle-area radio station that banned all music produced by or featuring Lloyd Maines, father of Dixie Chicks frontwoman (and newfound cultural lightning rod) Natalie Maines, because Lloyd didn't publicly distance himself from his daughter. Given Lloyd's stature and prolificacy as a producer, that wiped out about 75% of the popular independent Texas/Red Dirt music available to play. Thankfully, this sort of next-level extended-target belligerence wasn't widespread.
But still, a couple of decades later, it does seem like the mainstream country industry is wary about highlighting connections to the now-just Chicks, and I imagine the feeling's mutual. But speaking of the Texas/Red Dirt scene ... current mainstream country star Cody Johnson came up in it, probably crossing paths with guys like Bruce Robison and Lloyd Maines on the regular en route to getting so big he handily transcended the scene without seemingly burning any bridges along the way. Johnson is sort of retro in the sense of sounding more like the country stars of the late-'80s and '90s than the poppier stuff that followed, so covering "Travelin' Soldier" for one of his well-made YouTube entries isn't too far out of his wheelhouse. It's certainly a nice way to reintroduce a terrific, enduringly relevant song that has been retroactively overshadowed by controversy and flat-out spite.
I
think as a listener I had more than one foot out the door of mainstream country
circa 2002. Probably sooner, really, but running down this year’s list I’m
seeing more of the songs and acts that had me thinking this maybe wasn’t for me
anymore. I was getting deeper into trying to be a songwriter myself but wasn’t
hearing much on country radio that made me wish I’d written it myself, aside
from the financial considerations. Aside from the Alan Jackson CD I don’t think
I owned any of the albums the 2002 songs came from; I was pretty deep into the
alt-country and independent Texas/Oklahoma regional artists, plus digging back
into the catalogs of Willie Nelson and John Prine and Bob Dylan and whoever
else I thought might spur me on to better directions as a writer. If I was
listening to country it was passive listening, mostly at the day job. Most of
the stuff I liked wasn’t on the radio and I couldn’t really get away with hard
rock or hip-hop at work. And some of this stuff could make work seem
like a chore.
But
most of it’s not that bad. No point in being a grouch. Alan Jackson’s “Where
Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” remains an admirable example of
combining introspection with empathy, bringing an audience in on your own
thoughts and feelings, a plainspoken “we’re all in this together” with vulnerability
and faith. Songs with this sort of gravity often make an odd choice for radio
singles – usually a couple of listens to a tear-jerking message song is plenty,
you get the point and move on – but I feel like people needed to hear this at
the time.
They
probably could’ve done without Steve Holy and “Good Morning Beautiful,” but
tough shit I guess. On his first single “Don’t Make Me Beg,” Holy seemed like
he might’ve been a rockabilly-tinged throwback, but nah. “GMB” is as generic,
saccharine and pillowy-soft as it gets. His voice wasn’t actively irritating
but it was as forgettable as Ty Herndon and Mark Wills and Chad Brock and
whoever else had gotten a handful of interchangeable hits without leaving any
discernible impression. One can be trained to sing well, of course, but having
a distinctive voice with some personality to it is hard, and probably sometimes
discouraged by labels and producers to the detriment of the artist. Jo Dee
Messina didn’t have a ton of distinction to her voice either I guess, but she
had a good enough one to blend with the more-distinctive voice of her buddy Tim
McGraw on the lovely, resilient “Bring on the Rain.” Despite the twangy add-on,
this one managed to crack the Adult Contemporary top ten as well.
Tim
McGraw solo was up next with “The Cowboy in Me.” It’s a bit self-serious, but
cowboy mythology and ethos is a big business and perhaps the big-budget sonic
aesthetic is as sincere a way as any to honor it. Brooks & Dunn’s “The Long
Goodbye” was similarly grandiose but much more heartache-y in sentiment, a
masterclass of vocal empathy from Ronnie Dunn, covering a number by rootsy
Irish singer-songwriter Paul Brady. The specter of 9/11 hung so heavy over
everything it’s hard to not read into songs about resilience or mourning,
adding subtext after the fact to songs that were almost undoubtedly written
before it all went down. Was Martina McBride’s “Blessed” just another fluffy,
cheerful bit of throw-pillow country-pop or gratitude in the face of tragedy,
served with a stiff upper lip? Was newcomer Chris Cagle’s heartsick “I Breathe
In, I Breathe Out” just another post-breakup wallow or a self-healing mantra in
the aftermath of trauma and loss? Even the easygoing ramble of Toby Keith’s “My
List,” ostensibly about an overworked dad reassessing his priorities, took on a
little extra life-is-short weight in context.
Singing
about your kids was getting more and more pervasive; it was like they were
trying to follow the teens and young adults the Class of ’89 brought aboard
milestone for milestone instead of putting much focus on drawing in a new
mini-generation of young fans. Alan Jackson had led the previous charge and
remained on board with the content trend, even if he was stauncher than most at
sticking to more traditional sounds. “Drive (For Daddy Gene)” was a pleasantly
earnest bit about everyday lessons passed from generation to generation,
wrapped up tidily in metaphors about cars and boats. George Strait didn’t get
into parenting this time around with “Living and Living Well,” but the message
was that getting happily settled down was a better way to go than a carefree
(read: selfish) solo existence. Brad Paisley, one of the few newbies that felt
like someone who could be a successor to the Straits and Jacksons of the world,
sort of bucked the family-friendly trend with “I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin’
Song).” An extended riff on an old novelty t-shirt joke, it’s a folksy
singalong about a guy who responds to his wife’s ultimatum about his incessant
fishing by going fishing. At least he didn’t snag her purse and force her to
dance with him in hopes of getting it back.
But
so much for lighthearted humor for awhile. Toby Keith’s big statement song
“Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” might’ve had some
dark humor in the lyrics but, thematically, it was somewhere between a
chest-beating call to arms and a threatening scowl across the ocean. In the
wake of 9/11, you didn’t need to be a conservative firebrand to feel righteous anger
at terrorists; vengeful justice was a pretty common shared wish. Sometimes that
sort of un-nuanced contempt spilled over to whole races or regions or religions
and that’s not right, of course. And of course some pundits took the tack of
painting Keith as an opportunistic bigmouth, but there was little reason to
think his patriotism was insincere; he was one of the most enthusiastic
entertainers when it came to visiting and performing for American troops
overseas when he could’ve been richer and safer back home. None of that makes
this an especially good song though, and this sort of vague rally-cry stuff
probably went past troops feeling appreciated to swaying the public towards
giving the U.S. government a free pass on any questionable moves going forward.
But, much of a cultural lightning rod as he was suddenly willing to be, this is
all a much bigger discussion than Toby Keith.
Sort
of surprisingly, that was only #1 for a week anyway, succeeded by the much more
peaceful “The Good Stuff” by Kenny Chesney. Chesney had already established
himself as a specialist in lightweight breeziness but here he dove into the
hard-country tradition of songs about hard-earned barroom wisdom; he may have
been no Vern Gosdin vocally, but he did well enough with a tale about a
discouraged young husband given perspective by a widower bartender to hang at
#1 for a full seven weeks. It’s a little weird that him and the bartender end
up drinking milk (wtf, right?) but otherwise the story rings true enough and
Chesney’s lightweight delivery makes sense if he’s casting himself as the
youngster in the tale. When Tim McGraw finally broke the streak with “Unbroken”
it was a considerably poorer fit of artist and material; maybe the glossy
arena-rock thing sounded good live on tour, but on record the track sounded
clunky and the singer sounded overwhelmed. It sounds like something from
late-era Bon Jovi, and not in a good way, but at least Jon Bon’s vocals
would’ve fit the bill.
Newcomer
Darryl Worley, in contrast, seemed unlikely to tread into arena-rock waters
anytime soon. He was already a couple top-20 hits into his career and scored
his first #1 with the spare, ruminative “I Miss My Friend.” It was a modest,
well-crafted bit of twilit twang from a guy who seemed like he might fit
alongside Brad Paisley in a mini-boom of artists stripping things back down to
relative basics. Not really retro, just kind of a course-correction … it didn’t
change the business, but at least it kept some room at the table for the
likeminded. Diamond Rio had some built-in rootsiness with their bluegrass-inspired
harmonies, but “Beautiful Mess” was suburban country all the way, This kind of
flexibility probably helped them stick around as long as they did, but the
forgettable love song pretty much evaporated the moment it left the charts.
When
you’re only looking at lists of #1s, Tracy Byrd in 2002 probably seems like a
typo. He hadn’t hit #1 since around his debut in 1993, but he never really went
away or even stumbled much. He was a fairly regular visitor to the top ten or
thereabouts, not unlike other folks like Sammy Kershaw or Trisha Yearwood or
whoever that came out around the same time. It was just a crowded field and –
though this might be hard to believe, considering some of the middling junk
that did break through – it was pretty damn hard to climb all the way to the
top. But the good-time drinking song “Ten Rounds With Jose Cuervo” did the
trick for him. He might’ve had to make a gradual lean into bigger production
and gimmicky songs, but he was hanging in there. It would’ve been hard to argue
at this point, though, that he had much of a shelf life left with guys like
Keith Urban busting through. The male model-esque Aussie landed an absolute
smash with “Somebody Like You,” which somehow managed to sound like a total pop
crossover number even though the video is mostly Urban photogenically picking a
banjo, which also figures prominently into the song’s mix. I recall getting
tired of it at the time, but really it’s not bad. It actually sounds pretty
invigorating when you only hear it once or twice a year instead of several
times a day during its six-week run at #1.
And
anyway it was practically George Strait next to those Rascall Flatts guys that
I guess we always knew we’d end up having to talk about. If we’re just talking
their first #1 “These Days” then I probably sound like a premature grouch, it’s
not my cup of tea but it’s not actively irritating. One did certainly get the
feeling though that with their trebly harmonies, big-production genrelessness
and youthfully crafted images that they were mainstream country’s non-subtle
attempt to reflect the boy-band craze going around in mainstream pop. Granted, the
likes of Backstreet Boys and N’Sync had been around for a few years at this
point, but Nashville’s used to being a few steps behind any given pop trend.
So
it was nice to have a couple of relatively grown-ass folks closing out the
year. Toby Keith sat aside the patriotic bravado for the easygoing charm of
“Who’s Your Daddy?,” which was way more cheerful and less cocky than the title
suggests. Dude was having a moment, obviously, although like most things it was
a blip next to chart warhorse for the ages George Strait. Strait’s “She’ll
Leave You With a Smile” was a sad little wink of a song, an ode to a woman who’d
break your heart but was such a fun fling it’d be worth it. It was Strait’s 38th
#1 hit on the Billboard charts and, oddly, got as high as #23 on the all-genre
Hot 100 despite not being notably retooled towards anything pop. Unlike other
lifers who’d had to resort to gimmicks or major tweaks to their approach or
image, Strait being Strait remained enough to be relevant in a shifting
less-country country music landscape. A lot of stuff was popping up that wasn’t
to the taste of listeners like me. Just like it was in the early ‘80s when he
sprung up as a vibrantly traditional voice amidst the encroaching schmaltz,
Strait’s presence among the success stories seemed like a sign that maybe
things weren’t so bad. But unlike those earlier days, by 2002 you had to worry
just how long guys like him could hold down the fort.
THE
TREND?
Maybe
I’m leaning too hard on the 9/11 aftermath stuff here (at least in the
country-music-chart context). Toby Keith’s “Angry American” tune was a bigger
cultural talking point than it was a hit, and aside from that and the Alan
Jackson song everything else that met the moment sort of did so accidentally. The
more pedestrian observation here would be that things seemed to be taking an
inexorable turn towards the corny and schmaltzy, with chucklehead semi-novelty
numbers and florid love songs taking up quite a bit of space. The stuff that
wasn’t about the cultural upheaval of the day didn’t feel like it’d be relevant
for much longer than the material that was. Maybe the industry figured people
just needed a lightweight distraction in between the grim news updates. But
then again, this trend towards material that’s somehow both lazy and overdone had
been in motion for a while.
THE
RANKING
Where
Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) – Alan Jackson
The
Long Goodbye – Brooks & Dunn
Bring
on the Rain – Jo Dee Messina with Tim McGraw
I
Miss My Friend – Darryl Worley
She’ll
Leave You With a Smile – George Strait
Drive
(For Daddy Gene) – Alan Jackson
Living
and Living Well – George Strait
The
Cowboy in Me – Tim McGraw
Who’s
Your Daddy – Toby Keith
The
Good Stuff – Kenny Chesney
Courtesy
of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) – Toby Keith
I
Breathe In, I Breathe Out – Chris Cagle
Ten
Rounds with Jose Cuervo – Tracy Byrd
Somebody
Like You – Keith Urban
I’m
Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin’ Song) – Brad Paisley
My
List – Toby Keith
Blessed
– Martina McBride
These
Days – Rascall Flatts
Beautiful
Mess – Diamond Rio
Unbroken
– Tim McGraw
Good Morning Beautiful - Steve Holy
DOWN THE ROAD ...
"Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning" was such an of-the-moment song - and so tied to its well-respected originator Alan Jackson - that it hasn't inspired a ton of cover versions, at least professionally (seems like an odd one to float out on a bar-band gig). But a rudimentary search shows that it popped up on one of the highest-profile stages of all, even if I didn't happen to be watching at the time: American Idol. The show that gave us Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson lost its star-launcher rep for the most part after those early triumphs, but occasionally an eventual mainstream star would get an early boost from the singing competition show. Scotty McCreery's was the final winner of the show's tenth season in 2011, but at least within the country-radio bubble his career actually started its (still-going-pretty-well) crest about a half-decade later. He's had five #1 hits and several other top tens, including just last year (2023) .... I don't think this little writing project is going to go past the 2012 chart split, but if we did we'd be talking about McCreery quite a bit I guess. Anyhow, here's him putting some respect on the Jackson landmark in his American Idol days.
Josh Varnes doesn't have any #1 hits as of this writing, but he shared McCreery's willingness to cover a timely song years down the line for an appreciative audience. He went with the angrier Toby Keith song (and a more down-to-earth living-room setting) and, for what it's worth, looks like he could back it up if he needed to. He's got at least a couple dozen covers on his YouTube page and is a solid picker and singer, it's not unthinkable he could have a big hit of his own someday soon.
Maybe
2000 was the nadir, right? It’s probably hard to imagine nowadays if you
weren’t there, but that Y2K stuff was messing with a lot of people’s heads. Felt
like we were in for a long stretch of technical difficulties at best, if not
some end-times cataclysm. Perhaps a couple more decades of social media and
24/7 news cycles have normalized mass anxiety but back then it was kind of new
to a lot of people who were too young to remember the previous
constant-threat-of-nuclear-war boogeyman. People were probably having a hard
time concentrating on making good country music, but now it was 2001 and we
were more or less okay and it’d probably be smooth sailing, right?
No,
of course. The previous year’s presidential election was pretty friendly by
modern-day standards but ended in recounts and controversy, eventually narrowly
handed to Bush in a move that was widely seen as pretty suspect (at least by
the folks that lost, as these things tend to go). Social media hadn’t kicked in
but the internet was in pretty wide use by now so the same sort of stuff that
pisses off normal people on social media was kicking around email chains and
message boards and stuff like that. And of course 2001 was the year of 9/11,
the biggest “never forget, as if you could” moment of most of our American
lifetimes. I’m not going to get into the bottomless tragedy and ongoing
aftermath of it all here, but suffice it to say it was so enormous that even
the normally culture-war-averse country music charts couldn’t ignore it.
Much
of Nashville, like much of America (if less so recently), prefers to give off
the public impression of being apolitical or at least moderate. In the ranks of
the bigger country artists and power brokers there appears to be a mostly non-vocal
minority of relative liberals who choose to not rock the boat lest their
careers capsize, and a likely majority of conservatives who (with a few notable
exceptions) keep their politics low-key and polite, perhaps confident that
their viewpoint is the prevalent one in town and with much of the nationwide
audience anyway. Not much incentive to rock the boat when you’re already
steering it. Explicitly political songs tend to end up either being the stuff
of novelty acts and has-beens desperate for attention or artists big enough to
have the confidence (hubris?) to feel like their sentiments will be heard and
helpful. Much like in present day politics, there’s just not much middle
ground. Anyway, on to the songs.
Tim
McGraw’s cheerfully self-analyzing “My Next Thirty Years” hung on for the first
two weeks before ceding to Sara Evans’ similarly sunny “Born to Fly.” It was
twangy around the edges but with a certain widescreen pop appeal that was all
the rage amongst mainstream front-runners at the time; she looked really nice
in the color-saturated Wizard of Oz-themed video, occasionally drawing
from Shania Twain’s navel-sporting playbook. The Dixie Chicks also took the
opportunity to flesh out a song’s meaning with a video. “Without You” was a
typical (but lovely) lost-love lament with just enough hint of ambiguity to
apply to other grievous losses; the video featured a pregnant actress whose
newborn son shortly thereafter ended up surviving less than a week. The actress
asked that, instead of her part being edited out, the video be used in part to
memorialize the child alongside its general theme of vulnerability and human
frailty.
Lonestar
didn’t have a ton of personality or cohesion to their sound; “Tell Her” wasn’t
bad as far as 00’s country-pop goes (faint praise, I know) and it did have a
bit of minor-key intrigue and urgency to it. There just wasn’t much reason to
be optimistic it’d signify a whole new direction or anything. Oddly,
contemporary country’s new direction was suddenly pointed towards Australia, of
all places. First you had Jamie O’Neal with the smoky, vaguely haunting “There
is No Arizona.” An ominous ballad about a strung-along lover – perhaps a
belated sequel to Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn” – the sonics and O’Neal’s breathy
delivery were a fine fit for the material. Her countrified countryman Keith
Urban was way more chill on “But For the Grace of God,” a steel-laced
easy-rolling number about a happily coupled-up dude’s gratitude at being spared
the fate of his quarrelsome neighbors or that lonely old guy that’s always
wandering around town. O’Neal and Urban weren’t exactly Haggard acolytes but
they sounded about as country as anyone else on the charts at the moment. Not a
great curve to grade on, but apparently an easy one for a couple of photogenic
Aussies to climb. O’Neal ended up being a bit of a blip; Urban would grow into
one of the most commercially successful singers of their generation.
Toby
Keith didn’t use the success of “How Do You Like Me Now?” as an excuse for
consistent belligerence just yet; “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This” was a
nicely swoony slow-dance soundtrack, tastefully put together and sung with
hearty conviction by a guy who was always a more versatile songwriter than he
probably gets credit for. “One More Day” brought Diamond Rio to the next round
of their occasional step to the forefront, another solid example of the sort of
ambiguous lost-love songs like “Without You” that often get deputized into even
sadder moments; the song was used in tributes when NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt
died, and would certainly pop up again a few months down the line in the wake
of all the 9/11 deaths. Diamond Rio and Toby Keith handed the #1 spot back and
forth a couple times throughout March.
Despite
the ongoing drift back to being music for the middle-aged and settled-down, you’d
see the occasional initiative to bring younger listeners into the fold. Jessica
Andrews was already two albums into a career yet only in her late teens when
“Who I Am” hit the top spot, and it was probably exactly the sort of jangly
wholesome country-pop that some key swaths of her non-famous contemporaries
needed to hear. The youth initiative didn’t stick, though: this was the last
time she’d even crack the top ten, quickly ceding to a six-week run for the
relatively dad-country Brooks & Dunn and “Ain’t Nothing ‘bout You.” It had
the urgent pulse of most of their uptempo numbers but felt paint-by-numbers in
the writing, trying to kick up some romantic heat but landing a bit lukewarm.
Kenny Chesney, meanwhile, was more or less lukewarm for life; “Don’t Happen
Twice” was supposed to conjure up youthful summer romance but in its airless
production and listless delivery comes off about as hot as day-old coffee. Chesney’s
buddy and rival Tim McGraw hit his aim considerably better on “Grown Men Don’t
Cry,” a vulnerable number about letting the little joys and regrets and
tragedies of life go ahead and move you instead of being unnecessarily stoic.
Over the years he’d prove to be a good hand at this sort of sensitive material,
but even with the better ones you kind of wonder why people wanted to hear it
over and over on the radio.
That
goes triple for Lonestar and “I’m Already There.” Spending six weeks at #1, it
was their biggest hit since the generic devotion of “Amazed.” While that song
could’ve been about anything from infatuated young love to a decades-long
marriage, their latest joint was more specific, a hardworking father calling
from the road and assuring his wife and children that in some sort of
metaphysical love-conquers-all way he’s actually home with them, in the
sunlight and moonlight and whispers in the wind and stuff. Seems like an odd
cop-out, but it probably felt pretty relevant and self-assuring to a band that was
undoubtedly pretty booked up road-wise in the wake of “Amazed” (it was
co-written by lead singer Richie McDonald). This topped the charts for half of
June and all of July, so yeah 2001 country’s Song of the Summer was a maudlin
number about a dad calling his family. Look, I’m all about sad country songs,
from multiple eras and approaches. But the more the genre tried to go
crowd-pleasing pop, the more the emotionally-fraught stuff started to seem
forced and out-of-place.
Jamie
O’Neal was cooperatively singing “I swear I hear you in the whispers in the
wind” in the unintentional sequel “When I Think About Angels.” It was an upbeat,
affectionate number, theoretically well-crafted but without much meat on the
bone. Still, between her striking good looks and country-pop smarts, O’Neal
seemed to be giving contemporary Nashville all it could ask for, so it’s odd
how quickly and completely she was ushered off the charts after her second and
final #1. Then again, new competition was popping up every day; Blake Shelton
scored his first #1 with “Austin” and it was pretty huge, a five-week run at
the top. The song’s got a whiff of ludicrousness to it: the plotline centers
around a dude’s unusually long, specific, and emotionally resonant outgoing answering
machine messages, something that would probably totally be lost on a young
listener revisiting it today. But still, it was more straight-country in
approach and delivery than 90% or so of the year’s big hits, and Shelton’s
earnest Oklahoma drawl showed a lot of promise. It didn’t immediately entrench
him in the genre’s top tier: he followed up with some middling singles and took
a couple years to really establish himself as more than a one-hit wonder.
Eventually a prolonged reality TV gig on The Voice and a couple of
high-profile marriages would make him among the genre’s biggest celebrities;
figured I’d go ahead and mention that in case the next few years of 2000s
country shuts this thing down for good.
“Austin”
hung in there until early September, at which point 9/11 turned the nation
upside down. At this point in my life I was working in a chemistry lab, often
solo, and often with the radio on all day for company and I can attest that
there didn’t seem to be much music on at all for quite some time. When they did
pause the news updates and presidential statements for music it seemed like a
frivolous afterthought. Toby Keith’s upbeat, humorous come-on number “I’m Just
Talkin’ About Tonight” was pretty good but hardly the sort of song to meet the
moment; it was just a little distraction already presumably wedged into the
playlists before things got seriously dark. A young newcomer named Cyndi
Thomson swept in next with the big swoony ballad “What I Really Meant to Say.”
Thomson was model-gorgeous, had a nicely soulful edge to her voice, and the
song was straightforward enough but earned its big-production framing with some
hearty delivery. Maybe it was kind of a #1 by default in that autumn 2001
climate, but it still seemed pretty damn promising; counterintuitively, her
next couple of singles fell short and she was more or less out of the business
a year or two later, even publicly expressing in a letter to her fans that the
pressures of touring and self-promotion just weren’t for her.
Perhaps
a reeling nation needed to bask in the comfort of relatively old favorites for
a bit. Alan Jackson landed back on top with the bluesy kick of “Where I Come
From,” a fairly lighthearted number about back-to-basics life that might’ve
caught a little unintended relevance among the sectors of the audience that had
already switched to stubborn identity-based resilience as a response to the
terrorist attacks. The verses are appealingly offbeat – Jackson was better than
most at maintaining a personal touch in an increasingly generic environment –
but the chorus is pretty standard blue-collar southern-pride stuff without
being obnoxious about it. Similarly, Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America” wasn’t
a bit of overdone chest-thumping patriotism, it was just an affectionate upbeat
slice-of-life number. And of course it was written and produced prior to 9/11,
but that chorus sure hit different in the aftermath. I’m retroactively
surprised it was only #1 for a week.
One
nice surprise amidst everything was Tim McGraw’s release of “Angry All the
Time.” The song was penned by Bruce Robison, already a big regional favorite in
Texas songwriting circles (which was most of my focus back at that moment).
He’d already released a sublime take on it with his wife Kelly Willis on
harmonies and McGraw recruited his even-more-famous wife to do the same. It’s a
sad, even depressing number chronicling a marriage unraveled by the husband’s encroaching,
unexplainable bitterness, tackling the difficult truth that people just
sometimes change inexorably for the worse. Hell of a time to put out something
this downbeat, but it snagged #1 nonetheless.
Toby
Keith would soon steer hard into the cultural moment, but he still had an
existing album cycle to get through and “I Wanna Talk About Me” was the sort of
lighthearted distraction it’s easier to imagine catching on. It sat at #1 for
five weeks; some observers that had been willing to let various degrees of
country-pop slide were chagrined that this one seemed to be influenced by
outright rap. It kind of is, with Keith rattling off lists of things his gal
rattles on about in sort of a hip-hop cadence. I’d say it still falls short of
actual rap (or, thankfully, outright misogyny) but qualifies as harmless dumb
fun.
Alan
Jackson, meanwhile, became the first major country artist to meet the moment
intentionally and specifically with “Where Were You (When the World Stopped
Turning).” A couple of months is already a pretty tight turnaround time, but
his searching, soothing anthem had already been on the radio in a live-recorded
form from the CMA Awards show in early November. The official version was a
no-brainer to top the charts, but intelligent and sensitive in its craft and
message. Acknowledging that the events and aftermath of 9/11 could inspire
anything from grief to paranoia to distraction to gratitude, it managed to feel
100% relevant without any bitter whiffs of exploitation or self-aggrandizement.
Most of its run at the top would be in 2002 so we’ll talk about it more soon
enough.
THE
TREND?
It’d
be ridiculous to try to talk about 2001 in any avenue of American culture
without mentioning 9/11, but to be fair with the exception of the last song of
the year we’re talking about stuff that was written and recorded before the
terroristic tragedies. Before the resultant grief and anger and paranoia had
initiated, much less sunk in. But it did hang some additional gravity on songs
ranging from “One More Day” to “Only in America” to “I’m Already There,”
whether they deserved it or not. The nation’s political maneuvers and foreign
actions in the aftermath, not to mention the increasing public voice that the
internet was starting to offer almost everyone, would soon enough lead to an
increased pressure to pick a side and cling to an identity. That sort of thing
would resonate in the country music business soon enough, but for the moment
folks wanted something sad enough to commiserate with or charming enough to
distract. Not much of what topped the charts in 2001 would go down in the
pantheon of truly great country music, but at least there was enough to fill
those needs.
THE
RANKING
Angry
All the Time – Tim McGraw
Where
Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) – Alan Jackson
What
I Really Meant to Say – Cyndi Thomson
Without
You – The Dixie Chicks
Grown
Men Don’t Cry – Tim McGraw
I’m
Just Talkin’ About Tonight – Toby Keith
Born
to Fly – Sara Evans
Only
in America – Brooks & Dunn
You
Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This – Toby Keith
Where
I Come From – Alan Jackson
One
More Day – Diamond Rio
There is No Arizona –
Jamie O’Neal
But
For the Grace of God – Keith Urban
Tell
Her – Lonestar
Ain’t
Nothing ‘bout You – Brooks & Dunn
I
Wanna Talk About Me – Toby Keith
Don’t
Happen Twice – Kenny Chesney
Who
I Am – Jessica Andrews
Austin
– Blake Shelton
When
I Think About Angels – Jamie O’Hara
I’m
Already There – Lonestar
DOWN THE ROAD ...
Rachael Turner isn't terribly well-known but, like many of the singers we're featuring in this section as the entries get more and more recent (and less and less likely to have notable covers knocking around out there) she strives to keep herself searchable by sharing well-made cover videos of hit songs. She knocks Jamie O'Neal's "There Is No Arizona" out of the park in this stripped-down arrangement; on her YouTube channel, amidst covers of everything from Adele to Miranda Lambert to showtunes the still-youthful artist chronicles her battle with breast cancer with admirable courage and frankness. So here's hoping for her full recovery, longtime health, and maybe a nice career boost once she gets a chance to fully focus on that.
