Buckle
in, folks. We’re still in the era of
having a new #1 every week; The Judds carried over from the last week of 1985
with “Have Mercy,” but that’d be about it as far as multiple-week runs at the
top go for a full year and a half. Lots
to cover, and not to spoil it too much but a lot of this stuff has been mostly
forgotten for good reason.
The
year’s second hit, “Morning Desire,” isn’t half bad. Only a little whiff of cheese, by Kenny
Rogers standards, it’s a sincerely smoky number about wanting to hang around
and make love instead of going to work. Relatable enough, even if it’s not one
of the first dozen or so songs you’d think of if you think of Kenny
Rogers. Dan Seals, meanwhile,, scored
himself a career high with “Bop.” ’86
was going to be a big year for Seals; he’d had the #1 hit duet with Marie
Osmond the previous year, and had a nice run on the pop charts as part of
England Dan & John Ford Coley in the late ‘70s. Repurposing himself as a country singer might
seem cynical, but keep in mind that in the wake of folks like James Taylor and
The Eagles, down-to-earth pop with strong country undertones was a pretty
successful genre in itself; when the famously fickle larger pop-rock universe
abandoned that trend, those artists still had bills to pay. Don’t get me wrong, I still think “Bop”
sounds like lame-ass boomer nostalgia, but man that song was all over the
place, and Seals’ voice is by far the best part of it. Retroactively it’s hard to believe it was
only #1 for one week.
“Never
Be You” was Rosanne Cash at her usual smart, slinky awesomeness, penned by no
less a future rock god than Tom Petty.
“Just in Case” was chart newbies The Forester Sisters at their usual
pleasant okayness, penned by no less a whatever than a couple of the 50 or so
members of Exile. Juice Newton was still
proving to be an industry survivor, dusting off an old Elvis throwaway called
“Hurt” and giving it her gushy, big-hearted all. Then we get “Makin’ Up For Lost Time (The
Dallas Lovers’ Song)” from Gary Morris and Crystal Gayle – penned by Morris and
fellow schlock king Dave Loggins – a bit of big-production generic pop tied in
with the red-hot Dallas primetime soap opera. Variety-show pop crossover Marie Osmond
crashed the country chart party next with “There’s No Stopping Your Heart,” the
video of which awakened an enduring crush in 9-year-old me. She still looks really good in those
commercials you see on Fox News sometimes. The song’s just OK and could’ve just as easily been a Pat Benatar tune
on the pop charts. So could the
synth-heavy “Think About Love,” as tackled memorably by no less a superstar
than Dolly Parton. Steve Wariner had a
pillowy-soft country-pop hit called “You Can Dream of Me” in between the two,
so among his other accolades Wariner can say he was in between the 1986
versions of Marie Osmond and Dolly Parton. You can dream, indeed.
Then
things get even more country-pop blah for awhile. Exile had a lot going on in “I Could Get Used
to You,” with the combo of lite-funk and vaguely island-y inflections, but it
still didn’t amount to much. Dukes of
Hazzard pinup John Schneider scored another trip to the top with “What’s a
Memory Like You (Doing in a Love Like This)” and it’s not half bad, just kind
of dreary, true country in spirit but without a Vern Gosdin-level vocalist to
elevate it. Lee Greenwood emoted his way
through “Don’t Underestimate My Love For You,” trying to depict emotional
struggle I guess but sounding more like he was having a hard time hitting the
notes of a song that was scarcely worth it.
Broadway dude Gary Morris was up to the vocal dynamics of “100% Chance
of Rain,” but it sounded like the result of an overly complicated songwriting
exercise that didn’t leave much room for actual human emotion amid all the
fancy chord changes and choppy lyrics.
Fortunately, Alabama swept in to show everyone how to nail that country-pop
balance with the relatively cool and straightforward bounce of “She and
I.” That was also one of the most fun
music videos of the era, with Teddy Gentry rocking a hipster beret/no-headstock
bass combo and a genuinely hilarious parade of quirky character-actor couples
strutting their stuff in between clips of the band tastefully rocking out.
Ricky
Skaggs, who hadn’t hit #1 for awhile but was still totally in the mix, brought
things back to undeniable country with the fiddle-sawing “Cajun Moon.” Anne Murray dragged it back (politely,
probably) to ill-defined monogenre with “Now and Forever (You and Me),” but as
almost always, she landed on the tasteful side of things; it’s not without its
shimmery charm. Earl Thomas Conley
scored one of his better ones with the grateful, self-deprecating “Once in a
Blue Moon” and the Judds notched another signature song for themselves with
“Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ol’ Days).”
It seemed like kind of a sop to the seniors in the audience, a sweet
little singalong about how past generations had a better grasp of morality,
responsibility, and common sense than these damn dissolute kids nowadays. I’m not usually one to buy the premise that
deep-rooted societal ills are recent inventions, but I still like the song OK.
Hank
Williams Jr. – who knows a thing or two about complicated heritages – was
feeling nostalgic for something even older than his daddy’s catalog, cutting a
warm, spare take on the old Fats Waller joint “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and doing it
so convincingly you kind of wish he’d put out a Stardust of his
own. Kenny Rogers broke weird with “Tomb
of the Unknown Love,” an incongruously jangly number about jilted lovers
turning to murder, better than some of his other ‘80s output but its odd that
it made it to #1. Reba McEntire’s
“Whoever’s In New England” seemed like a sure bet from the start, a perfectly
produced portrait of admirably non-murderous jealousy, informed by modern
big-production pop but firmly in the classic-country storytelling tradition. Like
everything else that year, it only got one week atop the mountain, but to young
me it seemed like this was the one that cemented her as the bonafide star that
she still is.
Ronnie
Milsap went back to the nostalgia well, at a point where he’d had hits long
enough to theoretically be nostalgic for himself. His take on the Tune Weavers’ old chestnut
“Happy, Happy Birthday Baby” was sweet and straightforward enough, and by this point
the oldies’ influence was probably running at a stronger current among country
artists and audiences than it was on the rock & roll side of the dial. Steve Wariner was hitting his stride with
“Life’s Highway,” a warmly positive nugget of easy-to-follow philosophy. The Forester Sisters, sort of forgotten by
this point, continued to have a banner year with the smitten-kitten anthem
“Mama’s Never Seen Those Eyes” breezing by pleasantly enough until Willie
Nelson brought some gravity to the charts with “Living in the Promiseland.” A cover of a song by lesser-known
outlaw-country songwriter David Lynn Jones, it was a warmhearted, vaguely
progressive ballad hoping for a little more peace, charity, and optimism in the
world. It kind of split the difference
between Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA album and “We Are the World”
(which Nelson also guested on), both of which were pretty recent smashes at
that point.
Dan
Seals told a tighter-focused, more-specific story on “Everything That Glitters
(Is Not Gold),” a beautifully evocative number he co-wrote and delivered like
his life depended on it, a winsome ballad of a single-dad cowboy trying to
raise a kid on the road minus her rodeo-queen mama who moved on and couldn’t
care less. It gets at the complexity of
lingering affections and deep disappointments, and Seals’ clear lonesome tenor
is there for it every step of the way.
Lee Greenwood’s “Hearts Aren’t Made to Break (They’re Made To Love)”
can’t hold a parenthese to it … not bad, just a little bland. You could say the same about Judy Rodman’s
“Until I Met You,” which I don’t remember at all but apparently was an old
Loretta Lynn song refurbished into a sweet little country-folk vehicle for
Rodman, an industry lifer who finally got a moment in the spotlight and was
entirely back out of it a couple years later, working in production and
songwriting.
The
next few #1 singers wouldn’t be fading from the scene any time soon. Randy Travis, in his own modest low-key way,
was about to become a sensation. A onetime juvenile delinquent with a pretty
wild backstory, he’d grown into at least being able to do an impression of a
gentlemanly, uber-twangy baritone crooner, and a quirkily handsome one at
that. And unlike the crossover wannabes
who’d hogged an undue share of the charts for well over a decade, Travis
couldn’t have gone pop with a mouthful of firecrackers. Listen to one line of any Randy Travis song
and you’ll know that twang’s not gonna just wash off. Kind of nasal in the Willie Nelson way, but
deep and rangy as barrel-aged George Jones, he was every aging country purist’s
dream wrapped in a package their kids might dig too. He’d taken a brief run at a recording career
in the late ‘70s, but as far as anyone cared, 1985’s Storms of Life was
his debut album. “On the Other Hand” had been released earlier in the year but
stalled out quick; when his second single, “1982,” cracked the top ten the
table was better set for not only a re-release of “On the Other Hand” but
really, the whole turn-of-the-decade country boom. The song itself is a trip, in its own
way. A guy affectionately telling his
paramour that he needs to get on back to his wife because that’s the right
thing to do, which sort of seems like deciding you’re gonna unring a bell but
it’s still a hell of a song.
Fellow
hard-country youngster George Strait, already well into it at this point,
sounded much more convincingly repentant on the morosely compelling “Nobody in
His Right Mind Would’ve Left Her,” yet another example of masterful songwriter
Dean Dillon’s catalog fitting Strait’s heartfelt but un-showy delivery like a
glove. The Judds were more or less
carrying a traditional-country torch alongside Strait and Travis (and John
Anderson and Ricky Skaggs, although they were already slipping chart-wise) and
“Rockin’ With the Rhythm of the Rain” had plenty of rootsy charm to go
around. Not much depth, but sometimes
catchiness is its own reward. I don’t
know how much artistic control John Schneider was insisting on – he modestly
refocused on acting pretty much the second his country music career lost
momentum – but he kept things pretty firmly in the traditional-country vein
with stuff like “You’re the Last Thing I Needed Tonight,” which ended up being
his last #1.
“Last
#1 song” was about to be a bit of a trend, though it’d still be a few years
before anyone over 40 landing high on the chart would start to seem like a
miracle. TG Sheppard scored his last of
14 #1’s with “Strong Heart,” a pretty generic little devotional ballad that
didn’t really play to his old-time swagger.
The venerable Don Williams scored his last #1 with “Heartbeat in the
Darkness,” where some light-funk synth action felt like a pretty naked plea for
modern relevance (the album was called New Moves), although to Williams’
credit his warm, winning personality remained intact. He sounded more like a gracious older artist
sitting in with a younger band than some cynical lifer trying to get one more
lap out of a dead horse; glad to say Williams still had a few more years of at
least top tens in him. Even wilder,
though, was Conway Twitty scoring what would be in retrospect his 35th
and final #1 hit with “Desperado Love.”
Despite having some of the usual ‘80s sheen, it was charming enough to
be worthy of his talents; he’d have even better hits in the years to come, and
was cracking the top 10 into the early ‘90s.
He was still a fairly recent chart presence when he passed away of
unexpected but natural causes in June of 1993, only 59 years old. It’s going to be weird to not bring him up
repeatedly in every column going forward.
Reba
McEntire still had more than plenty in the tank, of course. “Little Rock” was more sass than substance,
sort of a “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” update about a rich man’s wife
deciding he’s bad at sex and affection so it’s time to ditch the diamond ring
(the titular little rock). I bet the
wives of some of the industry honchos could relate, but it seems weirdly
chipper and self-satisfied. Back to the
last hurrahs … John Conlee scored his 7th and final #1 with the
variety-show bounce of “Got My Heart Set On You,” another catchy but
kinda-empty number that couldn’t hold a candle to his empathetic best
work. He was about to take a steep slide
back down the charts, although to his credit he remains an in-demand live
performer even on the backside of 70.
Ronnie
Milsap had been riding the charts even longer than Conlee but still had a
healthy handful of #1s left in him. “In
Love” was an obvious detour from the retro bent of his last couple of hits,
about as generic a slice of ‘80s easy listening as one could ever hope
for. Janie Fricke followed John Conlee’s
suit by scoring her seventh and final #1 with “Always Have, Always Will,” a
slightly-retro torch tune, sung with gusto but a bit hokey around the
edges. She and Conlee filled kind of a
similar niche in their heyday; new acts in the late-‘70s with distinct voices
and relatable, unabashedly suburban middle-aged vibes. Even the lovely Fricke wasn’t presented as
glamorous, and while they both drew off of traditional country they didn’t try
to pass themselves off as rustic survivors in the Merle Haggard or Loretta Lynn
vein. And while they probably both had
more to offer, they at least stuck around long enough to help define the era,
and memorably enough to still be marketable live acts on the road decades
later.
Eddie
Rabbitt and Juice Newton were both doing their damnedest not to fall out the
back themselves, covering a song spawned by the soap opera Days of Our Lives
knowing damn well there was probably some significant demographic overlap. As country-pop cheese goes, it’s pretty
memorable, a candlelit earworm for the ages with Newton’s gushy delivery
bringing out a little extra spark from Rabbitt.
Newton would continue the trend of singers notching their last #1, while
Rabbitt still had a little of that Milsap stamina in him.
Tanya
Tucker, meanwhile, was enjoying an all-too-rare comeback story. The onetime teen sensation hadn’t had a big
hit in ten years by 1986; her relationships with older artists like Glen
Campbell and Merle Haggard had been Music City gossip fodder (although the men
were somehow never called out on their questionably legal bullshit) and she’d
spent a few lost years in L.A. trying to go pop-rock. She was still well shy of 30 in ’86 but had
the backstory to give a lament like “Just Another Love” some extra gravitas,
not to mention the voice to give an upbeat ditty enough grit to put it over the
top. Happy to report that she had
another decade-plus worth of hits in the tank and is widely acknowledged as a
legend today, if you didn’t already know.
You
can’t spell Crystal Gayle without “Cry,” and her version of the 1951 Johnnie
Ray hit was a typically classy slice of retro balladry. Her chart run was uninterrupted relative to
Tucker, but it was about to wrap up along with the rest of the era-definers
we’ve already mentioned. Exile was going
to stick around a short while longer, like it or not, and to be fair some of
those future hits would be better than the weightless “It’ll Be Me.” One of them would be their mission statement:
“Keep it in the Middle of the Road.” I
wonder if they were in on the joke on that one.
Randy Travis took a much dustier road, scoring another promising nod to
country music’s new directions with the ruefully clever details of “Diggin’ Up
Bones,” a lonesome number about sifting through the souvenirs of a busted
marriage. Like a lot of Randy Travis
songs, it’s hard to imagine any other voice giving it the gravity it deserves.
Restless
Heart, by contrast, tended to sound pleasantly anonymous. They were more about the harmonies than the
personality, and “That Rock Won’t Roll” was the first of several big hits that
landed somewhere in the continuum between Alabama and Exile, a less-decadent
echo of The Eagles country-pop-rock multiplatinum mishmash. Fun fact: Verlon Thompson
was briefly the original lead singer for Restless Heart; he was done by the
debut record, but if you were ever wondering if there was a Restless Heart-Guy
Clark connection then there you go. Genre-hopping collaborators Marie Osmond
and Paul Davis wandered back to the country charts for another score with
“You’re Still New to Me,” which is plenty cheesy around the edges but nicely
detailed in the writing and country enough that it’s not hard to imagine Conway
Twitty and Loretta Lynn making a little more out of it. Not to grade on a
curve, but the usually-reliable Alabama came off a bit ridiculous with a song
called “Touch Me When We’re Dancing,” which sounds like the title of a joke
record from a Will Ferrell movie.
George
Strait was a better steward of his own talents as 1986 drew to a close, going
to the Dean Dillon well again with the mature hurt of “It Ain’t Cool to Be
Crazy About You.” If you’d like a lesson in how to craft a sophisticated melody
and still maintain an air of hard-country soul, listen closely. T. Graham Brown
proved to be a promising #1 entry, with the soulful blast of “Hell and High
Water.” Brown had been knocking around the bar circuit and making ends meet
with commercial jingles for years at this point, and Capitol Records finally
made a bet on pushing him as a radio artist. He didn’t have a dominant run or
anything, but amidst all the whitebread crossover stuff it was nice to have
someone obviously rooted in blues and soul to spice things up a bit. Plus he
has a son named Acme Geronimo Brown, which is awesome.
But
what’s unintentionally comical is how, closing out a year in which every damn
week had a new #1 hit, the last two were efforts to see how many vocalists you
could squeeze into one song (not counting the likes of “We Are the
World”). Both of the Bellamy Brothers
and all four of the Forester Sisters had a hit sextet (har har) with the
ironically named “Too Much is Not Enough.” The circumstances being amusing
doesn’t mean the song sucks; it’s breezy, bouncy and likeable, a nice ray of
sonic sunshine for a late December. You could say the same for the
only-slightly-ornery “Mind Your Own Business.”
Hank Williams Jr. was well past his childhood days of being more or less
forced to copy his dad’s old songs, but remained a fan of tackling them on his
own terms. This time his own terms
entailed enlisting as eclectic a crew as you’d expect to hear on an old country
record: fellow outlaw country legend Willie Nelson, burgeoning country superstar
Reba McEntire, in-his-prime rock star Tom Petty, and sort-of-famous prosperity
gospel preacher Reverend Ike, for some reason. I seriously doubt they crammed
them all in the studio at once, but they all brought their own burst of
personality to a timeless Hank Williams song and rode it to #1 as 1986 turned
to 1987. Considering all the watery mess we had to wade through to get there,
I’m gonna call that a victory.
THE
TREND?
Even
looking at that subjective top ten down there, you might get the hint that ’86
was kind of a weak year. Never sorry to see Willie and Dolly, but that’s not
their best work. Strait, Seals, Reba and new kid Randy Travis sweeten the pot,
albeit with some fairly morose stuff. And once you ease outside the top 15 or
so your tolerance for whitebread crossover filler gets severely tested. To be
fair, Nashville seemed to realize this was becoming a problem: if you somehow
made it through the whole article, you’ll see that plenty of longtime chart
presences notched their last #1 hit in 1986. Not that the likes of John Conlee and
Janie Fricke were the worst offenders or anything, but young fans that wrote
that stuff off as their parents’ music might notice. As a reminder that lists
of #1s don’t tell the whole story, keep in mind that the insurgent Randy Travis
was the most conventionally-appealing of a whole eclectic raft of youngsters
that the major record labels were betting on around this time: Dwight Yoakum,
Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, and k.d. lang were getting hired for the sort of
quirky artistic visions that would’ve gotten them quickly dismissed in a less
adventurous time. Earle dubbed it “The Great Credibility Scare,” a small pile
of country-radio newbies that even a jaded rock critic or budding music snob
could love, eschewing mainstream pop appeals for deeper roots and weirder
routes. You won’t see much of this reflected at the top of the charts just yet,
but the ground was shifting underneath it and things were arguably about to
take a turn for the better.
THE RANKING
- Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold) – Dan Seals
- It Ain’t Cool to Be Crazy About You – George Strait
- Nobody in His Right Mind Would’ve Left Her – George Strait
- Living in the Promiseland – Willie Nelson
- On the Other Hand – Randy Travis
- Whoever’s In New England – Reba McEntire
- She and I – Alabama
- Once in a Blue Moon – Earl Thomas Conley
- Think About Love – Dolly Parton
- Never Be You – Rosanne Cash
- Diggin’ Up Bones – Randy Travis
- Hell and High Water – T. Graham Brown
- Mind Your Own Business – Hank Williams Jr. (with Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Tom Petty & Reverend Ike)
- Heartbeat in the Darkness – Don Williams
- Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Hank Williams Jr.
- Too Much is Not Enough – The Bellamy Brothers and The Forester Sisters
- Just Another Love – Tanya Tucker
- Life’s Highway – Steve Wariner
- Hurt – Juice Newton
- Bop – Dan Seals
- Morning Desire – Kenny Rogers
- Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ol’ Days) – The Judds
- Desperado Love – Conway Twitty
- You’re the Last Thing I Needed Tonight – John Schneider
- Rockin’ With the Rhythm of the Rain – The Judds
- There’s No Stopping Your Heart – Marie Osmond
- Cajun Moon – Ricky Skaggs
- What’s A Memory Like You (Doing in a Love Like This) – John Schneider
- You Can Dream of Me – Steve Wariner
- Until I Met You – Judy Rodman
- Cry – Crystal Gayle
- That Rock Won’t Roll – Restless Heart
- You’re Still New To Me – Marie Osmond with Paul Davis
- Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers) – Eddie Rabbitt & Juice Newton
- Makin’ Up for Lost Time (The Dallas Lovers’ Song) – Crystal Gayle & Gary Morris
- Just in Case – The Forester Sisters
- Always Have, Always Will – Janie Fricke
- Touch Me When We’re Dancing - Alabama
- Hearts Aren’t Made to Break (They’re Made to Love) – Lee Greenwood
- Strong Heart – TG Sheppard
- Mama’s Never Seen Those Eyes – The Forester Sisters
- Little Rock – Reba McEntire
- Tomb of the Unknown Love – Kenny Rogers
- Now and Forever – Anne Murray
- Happy Happy Birthday Baby – Ronnie Milsap
- Got My Heart Set on You – John Conlee
- 100% Chance of Rain – Gary Morris
- I Could Get Used to You – Exile
- It’ll Be Me - Exile
- Don’t Underestimate My Love For You – Gary Morris
- In Love – Ronnie Milsap
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