Despite whatever I might’ve said in that “trend” section for 1986, keep in mind that while the Nashville music business may show strong hints of cohesion and collusion, there are still enough competing visions going around to ensure that change happens slowly and not unilaterally. After Hank Jr. and co. rode out a rare two-week run at the top coming into 1987, next up was Michael Johnson, one of those lifelong cross-genre dabblers that some elements in Nashville just can’t get enough of. He’d done everything from Broadway to a folk trio with a young John Denver, and here he was burning up the country charts with an admittedly beautiful acoustic number called “Give Me Wings.” If he was opportunistic, at least he gave as good as he got.
Reba
McEntire remained an eminent chronicler of domestic dramas with the can’t-move-on
anthem “What Am I Gonna Do About You,” a question sort of answered by the
Judds’ follow-up “Cry Myself to Sleep.”
It’d be easy to piece together a half-dozen or so hit singles that
suggest the Judds were more or less a white-blues act in the Bonnie Raitt vein
that just happened to go country instead of pop. Just like Dan Seals (and Michael Johnson)
were pop-folk guys that found their way there; Seals’ “You Still Move Me” was
subtle, straightforward, and lovely enough to earn its keep. Gary Morris toned down the usual leather-lung
belting for a nicely low-key number called “Leave Me Lonely,” which I don’t
remember at all from back then but it sounds nice enough today. Dusty dobro fills and a last-call vibe that
suits him well.
Ronnie
Milsap celebrated his 30th #1 with “How Do I Turn You On,” a very
‘80s slice of slick pop that I don’t think you could even call
country-pop. No weight or depth to this
one, it’s just sort of there. Crystal
Gayle’s “Straight to the Heart” had some ‘80s brassiness (there’s a strong
whiff of the J Geils Band’s “Freeze Frame” there) but a little more meat on the
bone; it’s catchy enough that I’m surprised I forgot it. It was her 18th
and final #1, the end of an oft-overlooked run although Gayle is alive and well
and touring today. Unlike some of the
folks who notched their final #1 in ’86 (Twitty, Conlee, etc.) Gayle took a
pretty steep drop down the charts, never even cracking the top ten again, and
it’s hard to say for sure why. We were
still a couple years shy of slightly-older folks getting booted off the top end
of the chart en masse.
Earl
Thomas Conley still had a few more hits left in him; “I Can’t Win for Losing
You” was in his usual soulful, offhandedly intelligent vein and succeeded
accordingly. Conley was great at
crafting and choosing songs and had a fairly distinct sound; maybe he was just
an image consultant away from being an enduring icon instead of just a
long-running success story. Lee
Greenwood at least got to be the patriotic-song guy for the rest of his and our
lives; pleasant trifles like “Mornin’ Ride” were better than some of his
overwrought stuff, but not the sort of thing to lodge you in the cultural
memory.
S-K-O
is definitely the sort of act that quickly escaped the cultural memory, a trio
of Nashville songwriters (Thom Schuyler, J. Fred Knobloch, Paul Overstreet)
that MTM Records decided to run up the flagpole as a recording act, notching a
#1 hit with the generic cuckold anthem “Baby’s Got a New Baby” and fading back
out when Paul Overstreet decided he was better off as a solo act (if nothing
else he had the best name by far).
Restless Heart didn’t sound all that different from S-K-O but were in it
for a longer haul, scoring with the wildly just-okay “I’ll Still Be Loving
You.” Steve Wariner gave his
middle-of-the-road ballad a little more personality, unoverwhelmed by harmony
singers on the warm, breezy “Small Town Girl.”
Even the stone-country likes of George Strait got a touch yacht-rock on
the always-welcome “Ocean Front Property,” which worked in a bit of ironic
island rhythms in an extremely rare case of Strait deploying irony. Alabama was as sincere as ever with the
pillow-soft country-pop of “You’ve Got the Touch,” even if this sort of material
made it seem like they were losing theirs.
The
Bellamy Brothers, on the other hand, were picking up speed, at least in terms
of artistic ambitions. Most of their
past #1s leaned on good-natured sex humor and breezy sort-of-tropical rhythms,
and they were pretty great for the most part despite occasional aesthetic bad
taste (their 1987 album was called Country Rap, for starters, and the
title track is a lame attempt at exactly what that entails). So there was a lot of overlap with the Jimmy
Buffett aesthetic, although the Bellamys were the ones who could actually take
it to the top of the charts; then again, Buffett gradually built a
billion-dollar gimmick empire while they’re playing county fair gigs, so I
guess we can call it even. But like
Buffett, the Bellamys were better songwriters than the gimmick sometimes let
on, and “Kids of the Baby Boom” was a conscientious, well-thought-out
exploration of the ups and downs of their whole damn generation. That’s a lot to put on a four-minute country
song, but it never buckles under the weight of it: it’s a winner. They’d always sprinkled topical and
idealistic material amongst the deep cuts of their albums, but this was the
first (but not last) time they rode it to the top of the charts.
Dependably
ornery and awesome Waylon Jennings hadn’t been to the top without his
Highwaymen buddies for awhile, but found himself back there with “Rose in
Paradise,” a dark little ballad that found Waylon’s voice holding its own
spectacularly against some updated production that still retained his signature
Telecaster bite. T. Graham Brown
might’ve drawn more from the likes of white-blues legend Delbert McClinton than
Waylon & Willie, but he had plenty of swagger (laced with some healthy
empathy) to punch a barroom anthem like “Don’t Go to Strangers” over the top. Not
that you needed swagger – Michael Johnson remained sentimental as all get-out
and soft-rocked all the way to the top again with “The Moon Is Still Over Her
Shoulder.” It was his last #1, typically
lovely and tasteful, and he’d chart a couple more similar tunes (“That’s That”
is a particularly good one) before pulling a disappearing act.
Perhaps
loosely inspired by the success of the Highwaymen project, Warner Bros Records
teamed up longtime famous friends Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou
Harris for an album simply called Trio.
Similar to most of the Highwaymen, they were only a little past their
commercial prime, still big names and undiminished talents, and inarguably
better harmonizers than Kris Kristofferson.
The old Phil Spector chestnut “To Know Him is to Love Him” was ripe for
a reboot and the Trio did it as beautifully as you’d expect. The whole country-legend-supergroup thing
would be revisited occasionally in the decade or two to come, but it wouldn’t
get this kind of commercial or critical foothold again, although a year later a
pack of classic rockers that are well worth your time would try out the concept
as The Traveling Wilburys.
Younger
artists that leaned rootsy were still at least occasionally in demand; the folk-oriented
O’Kanes scored their only #1 with “Can’t Stop My Heart From Loving You,” a nice
bluegrassy number. Jamie O’Hara would
drift back into the workaday Nashville songwriter ranks and Kieran Kane would
be a notable figure as the alt-country and Americana genres cropped up in left
field. Devotional love songs were really
having a moment; the Oak Ridge Boys went big-ballad on “It Takes a Little Rain
(To Make Love Grow),” and Dan Seals kept his peak going with the brisk, breezy
“I Will Be There.” All decent tunes, but
the year’s biggest success story (devotional love song or otherwise) was up
next with young buck Randy Travis and “Forever and Ever, Amen.” Written by the ever-dependable Don Schlitz
and Paul Overstreet, it was an upbeat, baritone-twangy, lyrically-charming
blend of sweet talk and folksy humor that apparently hit all the right nerves
for late-‘80s country listeners: it sat atop the country charts for three
straight weeks in an era where that just didn’t happen anymore. If Randy Travis
wasn’t already in the new vanguard of household-name country stars, this one
cemented it for him.
Earl
Thomas Conley departed from devotion with the subtly clever “That Was a Close
One,” a love-em-and-leave-em narrative that intentionally doubles as a recipe
for loneliness. George Strait’s timeless
“All My Ex’s Live in Texas” was plenty subtly clever and even more charming and
catchy; it’s a hook so obvious and cool that it’s surprising it took until the
late ‘80s for anyone to get around to using it, but it’s fleshed out by
amusingly offbeat lines about transcendental meditation and no shortage of
rhyming Texas towns with women’s names.
Strait was batting a thousand and I’m not certain he’s ever stopped. The Judds went back to the blues-infused
country well for the smoky come-on of “I Know Where I’m Going,” clearly as
influenced by Bonnie Raitt as by the Lorettas and Dollys of the world. Steve Wariner came cruising back in with “The
Weekend,” splitting the difference between breezy and pensive while ruminating
on a fling he wished would’ve lasted a little longer. Sort of like how classic-rock vets Steve
Winwood and Phil Collins were scoring on the era’s pop charts, Wariner was good
at injecting some emotion into MOR arrangements, a bit slick for some tastes
but not entirely bloodless.
Ronnie
Milsap departed a bit from his usual slickness with “Snap Your Fingers,” riding
a spare bass groove for the first verse before punching things up (a little too
soon, in my book) with a horn section.
It’s more Rat Pack than yacht rock, I don’t remember it at all but now I
think it’s one of his better hits. Reba
McEntire went low-key and pensive with “One Promise Too Late,” one of those
almost-infidelity vignettes that are pretty much a country music subgenre (Reba
herself has several). Michael Martin
Murphey went more optimistic on “A Long Line of Love,” a sweetly wholesome
promise of romantic devotion using family history as collateral. It’s funny how Murphey’s short line of
mainstream country success was almost a lark, a little time-killer between his
edgy “Cosmic Cowboy” years in Austin and the devotedly rustic actual-cowboy
music he’d champion after the hits dried up. The dude won Best New Male
Vocalist at the CMAs over George Strait … that’s some Sam Bowie stuff right
there, except I don’t know if Sam Bowie ever dabbled in cool niche subgenres.
Restless
Heart kept the easy-listening-hybrid wing of country going with the admittedly
catchy “Why Does it Have to Be (Wrong or Right),” where the only link to
traditional country is the unnecessary parentheses. Hank Williams Jr., much to his credit, took
things in a more vibrant direction when he colored outside the stone-country
lines; “Born to Boogie” was an old-school rock & roll shouter in the Little
Richard tradition, refitted of course with Bocephus’ usual nods to personal
history and self-mythologizing, and it totally smokes. As per usual in the ‘80s country charts,
there was an immediate course correction back to soft-rock genrelessness with
Exile and “She’s Too Good to Be True.” I
know I pick on these guys and generally dislike their approach, but they do
sound better slowing things down a bit.
It’s not a landmark tune or anything, but it’s worth a slow dance if
you’re so inclined. It was a bit of a
landmark I guess when two of the kings of easy listening crossover, Kenny
Rogers and Ronnie Milsap, joined forces on the polite romantic rivalry of “Make
No Mistake, She’s Mine.” Kenny was an
old hand by now at spicing his own material up with brassier female counterparts
like Dolly Parton and Dottie West, whereas Milsap tended to yacht solo (at
least on his hits), possibly because most people couldn’t match his vocal
firepower. But Kenny was up to the task,
and I’ve got a soft spot for duets that make actual thematic sense without
getting too gimmicky, so I like this one.
I
don’t remember the Oak Ridge Boys “This Crazy Love” at all but I’ll take
Wikipedia’s word that it was their 15th #1 hit. And it’s good, a big
hearty beat and a touch of wocka-wocka electric guitar underpinning some smart
rhymes and the usual gospel-inflected harmonizing. Dan Seals scored again with the jangly but
regretful “Three Time Loser,” a self-penned mover that continued to give
country-pop a good name. The Forester
Sisters leaned more traditional on the sweet but slight “You Again,” the fourth
and final #1 from a modest quartet of harmonizing sisters that didn’t have a
ton of glamor or distinctiveness but were talented and smart with their
material choices. Probably their most
memorable tune, the salty and humorous “Men,” would crack the Top 10 in 1991
but that’d be about it for them chart-wise.
Rosanne
Cash still had a little left in the tank; not that she couldn’t write
top-drawer stuff herself, but she got an ace loaner from John Hiatt with “The
Way We Make a Broken Heart” that was so tuneful and emotionally intelligent it
sounded like she wrote it herself. Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band weren’t shooting for literary grace with “Fishin’ in the
Dark,” but it was a super-memorable, tightly-produced chunk of country-rock
goodness. Another entry in the genre of
songs that are totally about sex but pretend to be about something else
(fishin’, perhaps), it’d be their last trip to the top, followed by a handful
of top tens concluding with 1989’s fittingly titled “When It’s Gone.” As with Michael Martin Murphey, their run at
the charts was just one chapter in a multifaceted career anyway.
Another
reminder that #1s don’t tell the whole story: we haven’t mentioned Eddy Raven
since 1984, when he’d had his last #1 with the Jimmy Buffett-esque “I Got
Mexico.” But he’d had numerous top tens
three years before and three years since, good stuff like “Right Hand Man” and
“Operator, Operator,” and I’m not sure what makes “Shine, Shine, Shine” a
better bet than those but here it is. A
good-natured little groove, it sparked a nice run of recurring #1s for a
talented regular-dude singer who’d been making music since the mid-‘60s by this
point. Fellow down-to-earth lifer Earl
Thomas Conley notched his 14th #1 with “Right From the Start,” which
felt a little lightweight and phoned-in by his standards, although he was on
enough of a roll I guess it didn’t matter. George Strait’s “Am I Blue” wasn’t one of his richest numbers either,
but as an update of the classic Western swing sound it was one hell of a snack
for his band; for years I thought it was a cover of an old Bob Wills number but
apparently it was penned by David Chamberlain and Strait’s version is the only
one of note.
“New-traditionalist”
artists were definitely carving out a moment that would only expand soon
enough. The Judds briefly ditched their
bluesier inclinations for the dreamy country balladry of “Maybe Your Baby’s Got
the Blues” (ironic?). Randy Travis
stretched out syllables with his distinct baritone purr on “I Won’t Need You
Anymore (Always and Forever),” mightily capitalizing on the attention “Forever
and Ever Amen” brought upon him. Steve
Wariner’s guitar picking was always worth some attention too, and “Lynda”
showcased it as well as any. Generically
upbeat on the surface, a closer listen reveals some quirkily clever
lyricism. Back to the hard country stuff:
Ricky Van Shelton benefited from the business’ renewed interest in timeless
approaches, especially as delivered by good-looking young people. He was more
Strait than Travis, just a touch of twang in his sturdy baritone, and he could
sell the hell out of something as mournfully sharp as “Somebody Lied.”
And
the rest of the year would more or less follow the trend: Reba McEntire scored
a serious winner with “The Last One to Know,” nailing every mournful note
without veering into showoff territory, trusting a great song to almost sell
itself. It was penned by Matraca Berg,
who’d prove to be the go-to songwriter for the next decade-plus of
singers looking for smart, emotive material with a distinct female perspective
to it. Then again, some folks like K.T.
Oslin would just write their own. Oslin
wasn’t a country purist; already middle-aged by the time she broke through,
she’d done everything from playing folk gigs with Guy Clark to featuring in
Broadway musicals. But she had a sharp,
empathetic songwriting approach that was eminently relatable to her own
demographic – a huge portion of the country radio audience, still – and good
enough to transcend it. “Do Ya” was
equal parts sweet and salty, a come-on tempered with self-reflection. It was followed by Highway 101’s first #1, “Somewhere
Tonight,” a cross-generational co-write by no less than Harlan Howard and
Rodney Crowell. Powered by the aching,
gritty twang of lead singer Paulette Carlson, it was 1987’s last reassurance
that country music’s future was in the capable hands of relative youngsters
that hadn’t forgotten its past.
THE
TREND?
I
bet at the time it felt like the whole “new traditionalist” thing was hitting
its hard-earned peak, and perhaps not a moment too soon if the venerable likes
of Conway Twitty, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton etc. were finally losing steam. George Strait, Reba McEntire, and the Judds
all seemed to fit the movement and they were continuing to crest; newbies Randy
Travis, Ricky Van Shelton, and Highway 101 certainly fit the bill too. And its not like the folks who’d wandered in
from other genres were mucking things up, people like Dan Seals and KT Oslin
and Michael Johnson were making smart, resonant stuff that earned its
place. I bet a lot of discerning fans
(not to mention the artists themselves) had high hopes that this new round of
flagship artists was taking over. But in
retrospect, although some of them were far from done, as a whole they were
largely just setting the table for an even bigger wave just a couple of years
down the road.
THE
RANKING
- All My Ex’s Live in Texas – George Strait
- Kids of the Baby Boom – The Bellamy Brothers
- The Way We Make a Broken Heart – Rosanne Cash
- Somewhere Tonight – Highway 101
- Forever and Ever, Amen – Randy Travis
- I Won’t Need You Anymore (Always & Forever) – Randy Travis
- Ocean Front Property – George Strait
- The Last One to Know – Reba McEntire
- What Am I Gonna Do About You – Reba McEntire
- To Know Him is To Love Him – Dolly Parton/Emmylou Harris/Linda Ronstadt
- Do Ya – KT Oslin
- Fishin’ in the Dark – The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
- A Long Line of Love – Michael Martin Murphey
- Give Me Wings – Michael Johnson
- Rose in Paradise – Waylon Jennings
- Born to Boogie – Hank Williams Jr.
- You Still Move Me – Dan Seals
- I Can’t Win For Losin’ You – Earl Thomas Conley
- Don’t Go to Strangers – T Graham Brown
- I Know Where I’m Going – The Judds
- Somebody Lied – Ricky Van Shelton
- Am I Blue – George Strait
- Maybe Your Baby’s Got the Blues – The Judds
- This Crazy Love – The Oak Ridge Boys
- Can’t Stop My Heart From Loving You – The O’Kanes
- Lynda – Steve Wariner
- Small Town Girl – Steve Wariner
- Shine, Shine, Shine – Eddy Raven
- Snap Your Fingers – Ronnie Milsap
- Cry Myself to Sleep – The Judds
- The Moon is Still Over Her Shoulder – Michael Johnson
- Make No Mistake (She’s Mine) – Kenny Rogers & Ronnie Milsap
- Why Does it Have to Be (Wrong or Right) – Restless Heart
- That Was a Close One – Earl Thomas Conley
- Three Time Loser – Dan Seals
- I Will Be There – Dan Seals
- I Know Where I’m Going – The Judds
- Right From the Start – Earl Thomas Conley
- It Takes a Little Rain (To Make Love Grow) – The Oak Ridge Boys
- The Weekend – Steve Wariner
- One Promise Too Late – Reba McEntire
- You Again – The Forester Sisters
- Leave Me Lonely – Gary Morris
- You’ve Got the Touch - Alabama
- I’ll Still Be Loving You – Restless Heart
- Mornin’ Ride – Lee Greenwood
- How Do I Turn You On – Ronnie Milsap
- Baby’s Got a New Baby – S-K-O
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