1984 - darlin' I've wasted a lot of years, without seein' the real you ...

1983 was pretty heavy on the gems. Check out the top ten or so on that ranking again. Diverse styles, artists from different eras, great songwriters represented … hard not to dig that. And it was (and is) hard not to dig George Strait, scoring the first #1 of 1984 with his evergreen lament “You Look So Good in Love.” Relatable to the guys, irresistible to the gals. That little recitation on the third verse (“darlin’ I’ve wasted a lot of years, without seeing the real you…”) is icing on the ¾ time cake. Great way to kick off a year. TG Sheppard was on board too, outdoing himself with the groovier-than-usual love ballad “Slow Burn.” He didn’t always have the best taste in material, to these ears, but this one was a winner.  

John Conlee kept it downbeat too, with the devoted but complex “In My Eyes.” Talk about relatable … he could settle for amiable ditties sometimes, but even by country music standards he was an ace at plumbing some of the darker worries and fears of the common folk. Famously, Conlee was a mortician before he caught on as a country star, and never let his license expire. Guess it was good practice for staring uncomfortable realities in the face. Crystal Gayle’s swooping, dramatic “The Sound of Goodbye” wasn’t quite as affecting but it’s sincere enough in its romantic paranoia.

“Show Her” caught Ronnie Milsap in a tender mood, a bit more spare in spots than usual, which was a nice fit for him. And granted this is largely a matter of taste, but Merle Haggard out-tendered him by a mile on a hit cover of Lefty Frizzell’s sublime “That’s the Way Love Goes” that made the absolute most of his barrel-aged, time-deepened twang. Hag and whoever he was working with deserve retroactive congrats for figuring out how to frame a familiar and decidedly old-school voice in contemporary production without making it sound out of place. 

Ricky Skaggs was blending timeless and contemporary pretty damn well too. He obviously loved bluegrass and drew deeply from it but wasn’t all fuddy-duddy about it … songs like “Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown” met the production-standard demands of country radio, all crisp and shiny and percussive, while still weaving in the high twangy harmonies and acoustic chug Skaggs just wouldn’t be Skaggs without. Plus it was cool to see him tackling a bit darker of a theme. Don Williams stepped farther out on a limb than usual with “Stay Young,” a pretty rich sentiment coming from a guy who always sounded like he was born middle-aged. There’s even kind of a reggae vibe to it! Don’t know how the hell he beat the Bellamy Brothers to this one, but it’s a beauty and a nice change-up in the DW catalog.

And then you get Exile. Or sort of, anyway. A heavily reshuffled lineup of the pop band that had the big 1978 disco-ish hit “Kiss You All Over,” they were retooled by Epic Records as a country-pop band, or at least a country-pop brand. There have been about two dozen members of Exile through the years; it’s sort of like Menudo for middle-aged white guys. “Woke Up in Love” is entirely emblematic of the sort of snappy, weightless drivel they’d build the second act of their career upon. “Going, Going, Gone” by Lee Greenwood is no stone-country masterpiece, but he sounded like vintage Buck Owens by comparison. The durable old-school Statler Brothers (who could’ve taught Exile a thing or two about keeping a lineup together) swung back in with “Elizabeth,” which sounded like a Civil War folk ballad compared to all the slick contempo-pop dabblers they somehow snuck in between. Late-phase Statler Brothers could sound pretty stodgy but also somehow reassuring, the audio equivalent of a ceramic bowl of Wurther’s Originals and a Matlock rerun playing in the background at your grandparents’ house. 

Things jackknifed abruptly into Alabama’s story-song country-pop sort-of-classic “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler).” I’m biased because this is easily one of the most-remembered, most-quoted songs of my childhood even though in retrospect I misunderstood one of the central plot points. Despite growing up in a Christian (if non-denominational) home, I’d never heard God referred to as “the man upstairs” as a child, so in that dramatic bridge where the family of the missing trucker rejoices that “the man upstairs was listenin’/when Mama asked him to bring Daddy home…” I thought they lived in an apartment and the mortal man who literally lived upstairs went above and beyond his neighborly duties and went and tracked down the beloved father and husband, dragging him out of the wrecked rig or snowbank or whatever and driving him back to his despairing family. I also thought they were singing “roll on mama like the Eskimos do” instead of “like I asked you to do.” Anyway, good song. As Janie Fricke said next, “Let’s Stop Talkin’ About It” (that one’s just ok).

Earl Thomas Conley’s “Don’t Make it Easy For Me” was his usual default sincere-midtempo-relationship-song sort of thing, good but not his best. The family act The Kendalls scored their third and last #1 hit with “Thank God For the Radio,” perhaps shrewdly aware that DJs love spinning songs that specifically kiss a little radio ass (see also: “BJ the DJ” by Stonewall Jackson). Chart veteran Johnny Lee brought fellow songwriter Lane Brody in for a duet on a rewrite of the mid-19^th-century (how’s that for old school?) anthem “The Yellow Rose of Texas” renamed simply “The Yellow Rose,” engineered to be the theme song of a primetime soap starring Cybill Shepherd called The Yellow Rose. Sounds contrived, and I guess it is, but as rewrites go it’s pretty solid and their voices blend nicely. Writing this is the first I’ve heard of the TV show, but as many a songwriter has said about a shitty relationship or rough night: “at least we got a song out of it!”

George Strait went digging back multiple decades too, unearthing the old ‘20s jazz standard “Right or Wrong” and doing his hero Bob Wills (almost certainly the version Strait was familiar with) proud in the process. Given the song’s vintage, it’s pretty cool how out-of-place it didn’t sound. The Oak Ridge Boys “I Guess It Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes” was relatively hot off the presses, and to these ears it’s one of their best, richly and tastefully produced to get some pretty sweet dynamics out of their layered vocal harmonies and Joe Bonsall’s emotive tenor lead.

Then it was time for some high kitsch. Willie Nelson high. Nelson had spun elegant gold covering Townes Van Zandt with his buddy Merle Haggard the previous year, and soon enough he’d capture an alchemic mystique with soul legend Ray Charles on a similarly poetic number. But 1984 was the year he joined forces with cartoonishly suave international singing sensation Julio Iglesias to herald conquests past with “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” This could’ve gotten smarmy really easily – two aging troubadours waxing about notches on their presumably expensive bedposts – but honestly it was pretty endearing. The contrast between the luxuriously dapper Spanish pop icon and the eternally scruffy bandana-clad country warhorse was immediately amusing, and the lyrics are so damn devotional considering the subject matter that everybody comes out of this looking pretty good. It’s no “Seven Spanish Angels,” but what the hell.

John Conlee humbly narrowed it down to one gal for the sweet grow-old-together ballad “As Long as I’m Rockin’ With You.” Ricky Skaggs dug into honky-tonk instead of bluegrass for a change, unearthing an old Mel Tillis/Webb Pierce collaboration with “Honey (Open That Door),” a catchy little ramblin’-gamblin’ number that sounded considerably more rakish in Pierce’s hands (check it out sometime!) but was well worth another run. Merle Haggard kept his middle-aged baritone warble in fine shape on “Someday When Things Are Good.” Then it was time for the biggest country-chart #1 debut since Julio Iglesias: the erstwhile Eddy Raven clocked in with “I Got Mexico,” a Jimmy Buffett-ish rebound tune about healing a heartache down on a Mexican seacoast somewhere. The underrated Raven (who also co-wrote the tune) was good at wringing a bit of extra emotion out of songs that sound a bit fluffy on the surface, and this was no exception.

Things got pretty direct for a bit, with Alabama scoring another #1 with the warm soft-rock cheese of “When We Make Love.” Vern Gosdin, whose well-weathered gift of a voice had been knocking around the charts for a decade at this point, finally scored his first #1 with the galloping, confident “I Can Tell by the Way You Dance (You’re Gonna Love Me Tonight).” I’m not sure how this one slipped past Conway Twitty, but it was a well-deserved shot in the arm for a lifer who’d eventually be venerated as one of the great vocalists of his day (you might’ve heard him nicknamed “The Voice” at some point). His very best work was maybe too morose to get all the way to #1, but he was canny enough to shift gears as needed.

Speaking of Conway Twitty, the slightly-retro groove of “Somebody’s Needin’ Somebody” scored him his 31^st #1. I’d like to think Twitty was easily one of the guys getting first picks from the Nashville songwriter mill, confident in his ability to elevate them even further through performance, and getting richly rewarded along the way because this one’s another gem. Then as now, I’m less high on Exile but “I Don’t Want to Be a Memory” is pleasant enough, in a background-y sort of way. Anne Murray could do pleasant in her sleep, and “Just Another Woman in Love” is one of her best, a vulnerable yet cheery paean to full-grown romance. Earl Thomas Conley kept the mid-tempo warmth going with the self-penned “Angel in Disguise.” It might not be an all-timer, but I’d like to note that in the songs he wrote and chose, Conley had an uncanny knack for making the objects of his affection sound like fleshed-out characters as opposed to the shallow hot-country-girl sketches mainstream male country music tends to hand out to us nowadays.   

Next up was probably the year’s biggest #1 debut, another new artist trying to more or less steer country music back into a more traditional, organic direction: the Judds had a big breakthrough with the warmly memorable “Mama He’s Crazy.” Wynonna Judd’s dreamy, devoted lead vocal pretty much instantly put her in the top tier of contemporary female vocalists, with the durably foxy Naomi Judd lending motherly harmonies and a big dose of middle-aged glamour that had always been more than welcome in country music (and is unfortunately sort of lost nowadays, at least on the upper reaches of the chart).

Undeterred by the newbies, the old guard was successfully sticking to their guns. Don Williams got all warm and wise and low-key on us again with “That’s the Thing About Love.” Ronnie Milsap got all big and slick and emotive on us with “Still Losing You.” Next up was a band that took a twistier path than most to their first #1: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. They’d been around since the mid-‘60s (with no less a future classic-rock titan as Jackson Browne briefly taking part), founded in California during a fertile time for local earthy country-rock pioneers. They took the country side even more seriously than some, releasing the landmark 1972 album Will The Circle Be Unbroken in collaboration with folk and country titans like Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter and Merle Travis. Along the way they became the first American band permitted to tour the Soviet Union, backed up Steve Martin’s comedic “King Tut” song on Saturday Night Live, had a pop hit with a Jerry Jeff Walker tune (“Mr. Bojangles”) and retooled themselves as just The Dirt Band for a rejuvenated run at the pop charts. When that fizzled, they were a much more obvious fit than, say, Exile for a run at mainstream country music and for a while were welcomed with open arms in a genre that most of their longtime fans had probably gravitated towards anyway. They wisely hit up Rodney Crowell for some material and hit the first #1 of an already-long career with the gorgeously detailed “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream).” I was a big fan of their greatest hits cassette as a child so maybe I’m retroactively overestimating how huge they were, but this tune was the beginning of one of the more successful music-biz redirections of the pre-Taylor Swift era.

No point in redirecting George Strait; he was as reliably tasteful and relatable as always on the fiddle-and-steel waltz of “Let’s Fall to Pieces Together,” another one of those songs that’s so sweet in the delivery that it gives barroom hookups a good name. Dolly Parton was unenviably saddled with making Sylvester Stallone look credible as a country star wannabe in Rhinestone (it’ll always be hard to say how much of the movie’s comedy was intentional) but in the meantime she managed to squeeze a #1 hit out of it with the sweet, yodeling ramble of “Tennessee Homesick Blues.” And then, right on the heels of this nice run of legends (both contemporary and in-the-making) you’ve got the year’s biggest fluke with Jim Glaser and “You’re Gettin’ to Me Again” landing at #1. The brother of ‘70s “outlaw country” cohort Tompall Glaser, Jim had been a bit of an under-the-radar success as a songwriter and backup vocalist since the ‘60s. He’d popped up in the lower reaches of the Top 100 over a dozen times before, but for some reason, the weightless country-pop of “You’re Gettin’ to Me Again” got the rocket strapped to it.  Glaser was pushing 50 by this point; he’d been a part of some much better songs over a long and obscure career but somehow this one grabbed the brass ring and none of his future work got particularly close. He even won Best New Male Vocalist at the 1984 Academy of Country Music Awards (also up for it: four other guys you’ve never heard of). Long as we’re getting obscure here, some lady named Gus Hardin won Best New Female Vocalist that year, but has the more interesting footnote of beating future stars Amy Grant, Lorrie Morgan, and Kathy Mattea. So someone in the biz was looking out for Jim Glaser, but I guess they got distracted in pretty short order.

Merle Haggard continued to be a legend still riding his peak; he could knock out sly little hard-country nuggets like “Let’s Chase Each Other Around the Room” in his sleep and watch ‘em glide right up the charts, cutting through the upstarts and wannabes like a steel guitar lick through an ‘80s sound mix. Crystal Gayle was on a roll too, with the lovelorn “Turning Away” taking over at #1 … nice tune, although I don’t remember it at all somehow. The Oak Ridge Boys drew from their gospel roots again with the bighearted call-and-response of “Everyday” serving up some counterweight to the usual cheatin’/drinkin’/heartbreakin’ vibe. Ricky Skaggs was doing some roots-diggin’ himself (when was he not?), masterfully covering Bill Monroe’s hot-picking hoedown “Uncle Pen” and getting rewarded with a #1. Conway Twitty’s warm, really-familiar-by-now vocal dynamics brought out the best in a sort of slight tune with “I Don’t Know a Thing About Love (The Moon Song).” Lots of real-deal pros making easy-to-like and sort-of-surprisingly diverse music for the countrified masses. Alabama hit another home run (at least chart-wise … the song’s memorable but nothing groundbreaking) with the hoedown-rock mashup of “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band,” which I’m sure was news to ZZ Top.

Willie Nelson continued to be admirably restless in his search for material, landing this time on Steve Goodman’s passenger-train folk epic “City of New Orleans” and delivering it like it belonged to his warm, distinctive twang all along. Following up was the less-legendary but (at least at the time) comparably-famous John Schneider with his first #1, the hard-country kiss-off of “I’ve Been Around Enough to Know.” Schneider was mostly known as one of the stars of the red-hot, red-necked, kid-friendly primetime TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, which of course had huge demographic overlap with the country radio audience; putting Schneider’s name (or, perhaps even more can’t-miss, picture) on pretty much any tossed-off country single guaranteed at least moderate success. It didn’t have to be a good song, but to these ears it was, and it wouldn’t be his last run at the top. Exile’s annoyingly chipper “Give Me One More Chance” somehow took over, a harbinger of a string of forgettable tunes to round out the year. Johnny Lee’s “You Could’ve Heard a Heart Break,” Janie Fricke’s “Your Heart’s Not in It,” and Earl Thomas Conley’s “Chance of Lovin’ You” were all decent tunes that pretty much evaporated as soon as the DJ changed records. Anne Murray’s duet with folk-pop dude Dave Loggins, “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” was more actively annoying in that drippy power-ballad-without-the-power way; usually Murray could do pillowy-soft and still stop short of cloying, but perhaps Loggins dragged her across the saccharine Rubicon. The Judds’ “Why Not Me” wasn’t necessarily evergreen, but after five relative duds in a row it felt like a breath of fresh countrified air. Which is good, because we might as well get used to them.                

THE TREND?

I don’t want to just dismissively wave my hand at a whole year’s worth of songs, but does anybody else sense a bit of the mid-decade doldrums setting in? Even looking at the Top 10 or 15 there in my entirely-scientific ranking, there’s a lot of stuff I’m always glad to listen to but there’s also a lot of cover songs, some things our Yankee friends might call schmaltz or kitsch, some solid songs by worthy artists who’ve done better work elsewhere, etc. It’s not like Nashville abruptly turned into some risible crap factory in December 1983, it’s just that the wheat-to-chaff ratio seems to have gone the wrong direction.  If I were a bigger fan of The Judds maybe their introduction to the #1s club would be reason enough to chalk this up as a banner year. But as it is, I’m seeing a dip buoyed by a few bright spots, an encroaching blandness despite (or sometimes because of?) some newer faces in the mix.        

THE RANKING 

1. You Look So Good in Love – George Strait
2. City of New Orleans – Willie Nelson
3. That’s the Way Love Goes – Merle Haggard
4. Let’s Fall to Pieces Together – George Strait
5. Stay Young – Don Williams
6. Right or Wrong – George Strait
7. I Can Tell by the Way You Dance (You’re Gonna Love Me Tonight) – Vern Gosdin
8. I Guess it Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes – The Oak Ridge Boys
9. Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler) – Alabama
10. To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before – Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias
11. Long Hard Road (Sharecropper’s Dream) – The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
12. Uncle Pen – Ricky Skaggs
13. Somebody’s Needin’ Somebody – Conway Twitty
14. Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown – Ricky Skaggs
15. Tennessee Homesick Blues – Dolly Parton
16. The Yellow Rose – Johnny Lee & Lane Brody
17. I Got Mexico – Eddy Raven
18. If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band) - Alabama
19. Honey (Open That Door) – Ricky Skaggs
20. I Don’t Know a Thing About Love (The Moon Song) – Conway Twitty
21. As Long as I’m Rockin’ With You – John Conlee
22. Someday When Things Are Good – Merle Haggard
23. Mama He’s Crazy – The Judds
24. That’s the Thing About Love – Don Williams
25. Just Another Woman in Love – Anne Murray
26. I’ve Been Around Enough to Know – John Schneider
27. Angel in Disguise – Earl Thomas Conley
28. When We Make Love - Alabama
29. In My Eyes – John Conlee
30. Slow Burn – TG Sheppard
31. Why Not Me – The Judds
32. Your Heart’s Not in It – Janie Fricke
33. Let’s Chase Each Other Around the Room – Merle Haggard
34. Don’t Make it Easy For Me – Earl Thomas Conley
35. The Sound of Goodbye – Crystal Gayle
36. Elizabeth – The Statler Brothers
37. Turning Away – Crystal Gayle
38. The Chance of Lovin’ You – Earl Thomas Conley
39. Thank God For the Radio – The Kendalls
40. Everyday – The Oak Ridge Boys
41. I Don’t Want to Be a Memory - Exile
42. Let’s Stop Talkin’ About It – Janie Fricke
43. Still Losing You – Ronnie Milsap
44. You Could’ve Heard a Heart Break – Johnny Lee
45. Show Her – Ronnie Milsap
46. Give Me One More Chance - Exile
47. You’re Gettin’ To Me Again – Jim Glaser
48. Nobody Loves Me Like You – Anne Murray & Dave Loggins
49. Going, Going, Gone – Lee Greenwood
50. Woke Up in Love - Exile

DOWN THE ROAD ...

I guess this wasn't a huge year for songs that'd eventually be prominently covered. "City of New Orleans" and "That's the Way Love Goes" were covers anyway, and George Strait's own staying power on the country charts made him an unlikely subject for revival, and plus yeah some of the other stuff's pretty blah. But I'm happy to say a worthy update of "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" exists, charismatically delivered by Raul Malo (perhaps best known as frontman of The Mavericks) and grizzled singer-songwriter Jamey Johnson. Both guys sort of helped pave the way for the current Americana/indie-country boom, each getting just enough Nashville success to attain some relevance en route to following their own muses. They aren't as humorously contrasted as Willie & Julio were once upon a time, although Malo's Latin smoothness and Johnson's outlaw bonafides echo the originators enough to be clever. Sure, they don't bear the same buzz of international-superstar wattage, but damn if they aren't really, really good singers.