1996 - I still remember when thirty was old ...

I realize that “go wrong” is a subjective term in music, but 1996 in hindsight looks like evidence that things don’t go wrong all at once. A lot of this stuff is downright non-excruciating. Some of it’s even pretty great. Kicking off with Bryan White and the mewling wholesomeness of “Rebecca Lynn” isn’t promising; it sounds entirely like a love song for children, by children, which is not the country music I’m looking for then or now. Faith Hill was pretty damn country-pop with “It Matters to Me,” but she sure sounded like an adult with adult problems, with an empathetic voice to drive it home. Shania Twain was also a full-grown adult but willing to abdicate it for big doses of sugar-rush escapism like “(If You’re Not in It For Love) I’m Outta Here!” We were entering the heavily-punctuated-title phase of Twain’s career, leaning hard on the big sexy pop moves; Twain was far from the vocal artistry of a Whitney Houston, but her voice did have a warm insistence to it that could carry the right hook. Her personal aesthetic continued to carry the day, a foxy dream-gal for the guys and a self-assured aspirational figure for the ladies.  

Aesthetics were kind of beside the point for Joe Diffie; he was more of a John Conlee for his day, a guy with a bighearted twang and regular-joe appeal. But he was already on his way back through the revolving door of mid-‘90s country; “Bigger Than the Beatles” was his fifth and final #1, a cheerful lightweight singalong that’s far from his “Ships That Don’t Come In” best. Diffie would ease back onto the honky-tonk circuit and writer’s appointments, a happily low-key part of the business for decades until late March of 2020 when he became one of the first reasonably-well-known entertainers to pass on from complications of COVID.

Martina McBride, meanwhile, was on her way up. “Wild Angels” finally snagged her a #1 after a couple years flitting near the top of the chart. She’d prove to be a long-haul presence, a tiny brunette with a huge voice that she was capable of tastefully reigning in if she just had to. “Wild Angels” gave it room to soar, though. And not to come off like some sort of leering dork (I know, too late), but between McBride, Hill, Twain, and others we’ll talk about soon enough, female stars with conventional, only-occasionally-overdone sex appeal were really having a moment in the mid-‘90s. The male stars who’d sort of hogged the focus at the turn of the decade were still in the mix: Alan Jackson’s simple, earnest “I’ll Try” was still good enough for a week at the top, and Garth Brooks scored his 15^th #1 with “Beaches of Cheyenne.” A midtempo country-rock ballad about the grieving lover of a gone-too-soon rodeo cowboy, it struck just the right balance of ambitious songcraft and fist-pumping catchiness.

Patty Loveless wasn’t the most obvious candidate to be hitting a mid-‘90s career peak; she’d been at it for about as long as some of the guys who’d already been replaced on the charts, and certainly could’ve been filed alongside other folks like Marty Stuart and Dwight Yoakam who split the difference between preserving traditions and pushing envelopes, building impressive bodies of work but mostly falling shy of the top spot. But she had a knack for finding just the right material for her voice, smart hooks like the chiming, resilient “You Can Feel Bad” that sounded timeless instead of self-consciously retro. Wynonna was a less-constant presence by this point: I don’t recall “To Be Loved By You” at all, and only dimly remember her previous few top ten hits, which is pretty rare for me regarding ‘90s country. It’s a nice song but hardly the stickiest, a slow-rolling river of dusky adult contemporary balladry, and Wynonna rolled out of the top ten for good immediately afterwards. She wasn’t done or anything, and she’s still not … eventually her mom Naomi was well enough for a Judds reunion tour, there’ve been albums exploring gospel and blues roots, she’s probably gigging somewhere as we speak. Her run of solo smash hits was sort of short but high-quality, so she shuffled on to the next chapters with her head held high.   

One leaves, one enters … Lonestar, a pack of native Texans that met up in Nashville and formed a band, scored their first #1 with “No News.” It was the sort of punchy, twangy but rock-inflected stuff Brooks & Dunn were regularly topping the chart with, made distinct by a bunch of off-the-wall lyrics about alien abductions and Grateful Dead tours, speculating about the whereabouts of a lover who ghosted the narrator before that was a popular way to put it. Fun song but not necessarily indicative of where the genre or even the band was headed; for better or worse, they’d be one of the more malleable acts of the era, amiably shifting gears from single to single in search of the next hit. There was plenty of gear-shifting in the racecar video for Shania Twain’s “You Win My Love,” the sort of song that seemed like an invasive pop trifle at the time but looking back just seems like some harmless fun.

Brooks & Dunn were about as consistent as hitmakers got in the day, without sacrificing their downhome charm in the process. They certainly had the clout to cut something like “My Maria” if they wanted to; obscure ‘70s Texas songwriter BW Stevenson wasn’t an obvious source to cover, but his lone pop hit was ripe for rediscovery and Kix & Ronnie were just old enough to have been influenced directly by that whole “Cosmic Cowboy” scene. Turns out Dunn could flex his hearty twang into a pretty fetching falsetto on command, giving the jangly folk-rock number the romantic reverie it deserved. It was a nice break from some of the generic stuff they’d been stumbling into. The evergreen George Strait had a shade more pop in his mix than before; stuff like “Blue Clear Sky” veered close to the NG/AG blend that was big on the mid-‘90s charts, but along with producer Tony Brown he always managed to steer the arrangements and instrumentation towards the country side of the mark. I’m not sure if anyone’s ever been as gifted as Strait at relentlessly hunting down hits while still keeping their dignity and integrity remarkably intact.

Tracy Lawrence scored a career highlight with “Time Marches On,” earning three weeks at the top with a number written by Bobby Braddock, the man behind such landmarks as “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” This isn’t quite that huge, but its attention to folksy detail in service of a song about the inexorable charge of the eras was a neat and memorable trick. Shania Twain took a moment to remind everyone, including possibly herself, that she was a country singer with the sweet little shuffle of “No One Needs to Know.” I don’t know if it was to scratch a sincerely-held artistic itch or just a cynical sop to the audience, but either way it’s pretty good. I can’t say as much for Ricochet’s “Daddy’s Money,” which is one of the biggest piles of dog shit to ever get cleared for airplay. A generic harmony act from Oklahoma, they somehow ended up with a piece of half-baked upbeat pandering wordplay from three lifer songwriters who were probably just hosing all the dumbest ideas off of their internal filters and catching them in a leaky bucket clumsily labeled “Daddy’s Money” so they could say they at least knocked out something on a late Friday afternoon in a Nashville cubicle somewhere. Hot damn it sucks.

Ugh, “Don’t Get Me Started.” Actually that song’s not half as bad; it was the only #1 for Rhett Akins, who was on a nice little young-gun run there for awhile. He’s probably better-remembered for “That Ain’t My Truck” (or possibly for being the father of currently-famous Nashville guy Thomas Rhett) but this one was OK as far as breezy recollections of youthful romance go. George Strait continued to be the king of relatively mature romance with stuff like “Carried Away.” Strait’s got that cool trick of not having what appears to be a huge vocal range so when he reaches for those big notes – which he invariably nails – it resonates like he’s reaching out to the listener as well. As with most good-to-great country music, it’s the gravity that makes it soar.

Tim McGraw was less concerned about steering clear of lightweight adult-pop moves, perhaps confident that his tenor was twangy enough to keep things recognizably country on stuff like “She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart.” A reverent ode to a faithful beauty, it’s got a certain warmth to it even if it’s not your cup of tea. But then it was time for some flat-out gimmickry again: newcomer Mindy McCready with a shameless Shania ripoff “Guys Do it All the Time.” She’d already cracked the top ten with the fine-enough “Ten Thousand Angels,” but shifted gears from sweetheart-next-door to over-the-top sass factory for an “Any Man of Mine” retread full of lame jokes about gals drinking beers, watching sports and ignoring home responsibilities. You know, like a guy! It wasn’t hard to play up the attractive blonde’s sex appeal for a video splitting the difference between empowerment and objectification. But it was hard to keep McCready healthy; if five decades of country songs haven’t depressed you by now, read an account of her life sometime. It’s a bleak and sordid chain of abuse (substance and otherwise), personal traumas and legal run-ins peppered by suicide attempts until a final one in February 2013, only 37 in age but tragically high in mileage. I’ve got no jokes about this one … I hope a couple of hit songs brought her some happiness while they could.  

Bryan White, for what it’s worth, finally scored with an upbeat tune: “So Much For Pretending” was more brisk pop jangle than country-rock, but it still felt like an attempt to broaden his audience past adolescent girls. They even butched him up a little for the video, hanging out in ballparks and stuff, probably aware that his image was inviting some homophobic disses that were unfounded by anything in his actual personal life. The relatively square-jawed Ty Herndon, meanwhile, was still on a modest roll with the NG/AG (but not-unpleasant) “Living in a Moment” gliding to #1, even though rumors were starting to creep around about him too. It took a little longer with these sorts of things back before widespread internet usage kicked in, but in Herndon’s case there was actually something to it: about two decades later, well after his career had hit the footnote stage, he went ahead and went public about being gay. He reclaimed a blip of relevance and a big dose of dignity; good for him, good for everyone to some extent, but a decade and a half later it’s still hard to imagine a mainstream country star hitting the prime of their career as an out gay male. So much for pretending, indeed.

Keeping the accidentally-relevant song titles going, Trisha Yearwood racked up another smash with the breezy, Linda Ronstadt-esque “Believe Me Baby (I Lied).” Clint Black continued to diverge from the ambitious takes on hard country that brought him fame in the first place: “Like the Rain” is a well-considered piece of songcraft, alternating between an easy-to-follow central metaphor and some twistier wordplay around the edges, with plenty of dynamic shifts and high notes to show off one’s vocal chops, twangy or otherwise. Black’s were still twangy as all hell, giving some down-to-earth grit to offset the arena-pop showiness of the whole thing. Patty Loveless came off like much less of a tryhard on the sweet-and-sour “Lonely Too Long,” a full-grown reflection on last night’s one night stand … you can almost see the awkwardly affectionate glances and smell the hazily-prepared morning coffee, it’s good stuff.  

Honestly there was plenty of good stuff to celebrate, despite the Ricochets of the world trying to ruin things. Deana Carter eased right out of the gate with “Strawberry Wine,” her first big single and one of the era’s best and most enduring hits. A beautiful blonde rehab therapist whose dad Fred had been a Nashville jack-of-all-trades, she shifted gears as her 30^th birthday neared and took an honest shot at singing stardom. Matraca Berg would be a (the?) go-to songwriter for female country stars for quite awhile and it’s clear why: the blend of romanticism and earthy reality is hard not to love, heightened by Carter’s slightly-cracked, emotionally-rich twang. Carter wouldn’t have a huge career, but she’s still touring off the strength of this one and deserves to be. It’s one for the ages.

Alan Jackson’s take on Tom T. Hall’s “Little Bitty” was a welcome breath of country-fresh air (with a touch of Cajun flavor in the fiddles and vocal fills) too. A cover of a late-career work by legendary singer-songwriter Tom T. Hall, it manages to be cute without being cutesy, folksy without being pandering, lots of neat little tightrope tricks that artists like Hall and Jackson pull off better than most. Newcomer LeAnn Rimes seemed like she was gearing up to be a hard-country aficionado herself: she’d made a hell of a splash early in the year with “Blue,” an old late-‘50s tune from Bill Mack that ended up on the desk of a singer barely in her teens. Rimes’ rendition was hailed by fans and media as some sort of precocious miracle, this cute Texas kid who could nail all the notes and most of the spirit of the Patsy Cline era, a sprouting resistance to modern country’s slow rotation back to crossover pop emptiness. Well, joke’s on you, fans and media. Somehow that song barely cracked the top ten (surprising in retrospect, I’d assumed it was a smash) and Rimes’ lone #1 to date ended up being the wan NG/AG anthem “One Way Ticket (Because I Can).” A generically OK kiss-off number, its two-week run bridged into 1997, enough to convince Rimes that her short-lived country wunderkind phase was best left in the ditch en route to slicker, poppier pastures. It’s probably just as well. She’s still fairly famous and barely 40. This is one of those rare cases in this project where I’d feel justified in saying it’s the artist’s only and/or last #1 so far.

THE TREND?    

The trend is the blend, I guess, as it often is in the Nashville mainstream. It’s a turn-and-burn kind of business but it’s more straggler-friendly than most. You need new songs, you want new stars, but there’s no rush to push the old guard offstage when they haven’t even quite hit middle age themselves. You don’t have to kick Strait and Garth and Alan out just because this new Shania thing’s working out; might wanna keep them around, just in case it goes the way of Billy Ray Cyrus. The urge to please everyone (or at least as wide a swath as possible) remains palpable, with different sounds and approaches and longevities getting their turn at the top. Even if I don’t like it all, then or now, I can acknowledge how that’s healthy. But you know that old cliché I’m probably paraphrasing about how the enemy of “great” isn’t “terrible,” it’s “good enough”? That sure seems to apply to the mid-‘90s, and ’96 is as glaring an example as any. You might take issue with my highly scientific rankings but, to my taste, you don’t hit any total stinkers until the bottom three or so. But: you also run out of anything resembling a classic past the top three (and two of those are covers of tunes by much older artists). Maybe country music was still the prevalent voice of Middle America, but that sure made it look like we all thought medium good was good enough.     

THE RANKING

1. Strawberry Wine – Deana Carter
2. Little Bitty – Alan Jackson
3. My Maria – Brooks & Dunn
4. It Matters to Me – Faith Hill
5. The Beaches of Cheyenne – Garth Brooks
6. Carried Away – George Strait
7. Wild Angels – Martina McBride
8. Lonely Too Long – Patty Loveless
9. You Can Feel Bad – Patty Loveless
10. Like the Rain – Clint Black
11. Blue Clear Sky – George Strait
12. I’ll Try – Alan Jackson
13. No One Needs to Know – Shania Twain
14. You Win My Love – Shania Twain
15. No News - Lonestar
16. Time Marches On – Tracy Lawrence
17. She Never Lets It Go To Her Heart - Tim McGraw
18. If You’re Not in It For Love (I’m Outta Here!!) – Shania Twain
19. Believe Me Baby (I Lied) – Trisha Yearwood
20. To Be Loved By You - Wynonna
21. Bigger Than The Beatles – Joe Diffie
22. Living In A Moment – Ty Herndon
23. Don’t Get Me Started – Rhett Akins
24. One Way Ticket – LeeAnn Rimes
25. Guys Do It All the Time – Mindy McCready
26. So Much For Pretending – Bryan White
27. Daddy’s Money - Ricochet
28. Rebecca Lynn - Bryan White

DOWN THE ROAD ...

At this point I usually just go straight to folk-rock stalwarts American Aquarium's two recent albums of '90s country covers to see if they did anything on these mid-'90s lists (fun as the project was, it's hard to remember for sure sometimes which ones they tackled). Sure enough, they did do "Strawberry Wine," and given the tongue-in-cheek nature of the records and AA's general (healthy) irreverence, it's not surprising they didn't bother gender-flipping the lyrics. Don't know whether that was meant to be amusing or just a winking "love-is-love" narrative twist (frontman BJ Barham does not have a remotely unmasculine voice), maybe it's both. They cover plenty of other women but most major recent hits by female artists aren't as strikingly, wistfully sexy as "Strawberry Wine" so they don't jump out at you quite so much.

A few unremarkable years after the cutoff point for this little writing project, Sam Hunt became a major player on the country charts with the massive hit "Body Like a Back Road" among others. Unabashedly coopting bits of pop, hip-hop, and EDM into his sort-of-suave, for-the-ladies approach, he probably had more to lose if he kept things ambiguous. But still, despite happening on the Bobby Bones Show his rendition of "Strawberry Wine" was dignified enough, recasting the narrator as the studly grandkid with the car and imagining he's pining just as much for his beautiful young summer love as she might be for him. Awww.

 

1995 - they ain't as backward as they used to be ...

’95 picked up where ’94 left off with “Pickup Man,” and soon enough segued right into “Not a Moment Too Soon,” the sort of breezy earnest country-pop that’d be Tim McGraw’s stock in trade. Unmistakably twangy as his tenor was, his backing tracks usually had a strong whiff of crossover … it probably stuck in the craw of folks like Alan Jackson, who had already started musing on the shifting state of things with “Gone Country.” Penned by the great Bob McDill – he of numerous Don Williams and Mel McDaniel hits, among many others – it’s not entirely clear if it’s embracing the pop and folk musicians in the vignettes that decide to take their talents to the country genre. Is McDill-by-way-of-Jackson welcoming them into the fold and congratulating them for getting into something rootsy? Or is it subtly dissing them for being out-of-their-depth opportunists? Jackson’s public explanation seemed to lean towards the friendlier interpretation, but soon enough he’d be singing about “Murder on Music Row” so there must’ve been a tipping point somewhere.

Pam Tillis was born country – her dad was beloved singer-songwriter Mel Tillis – although she’d dabbled in New Wave pop in the ‘80s before shifting her talents to her father’s genre. She’d been a top ten regular for years before scoring her first and only #1 with “Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life);” it wasn’t as memorable as earlier hits like “Shake the Sugartree” or “Maybe it Was Memphis,” but it was a fun, vaguely Tex-Mex romp in a year that needed a little spicing up. Collin Raye continued to be up for singing just about anything; “My Kind of Girl” had a hearty-enough country-rock pulse but squandered it on a cringey blind date recap narrative about a woman who sounds savvy enough to not like this kind of shit. “Old Enough to Know Better” was an improvement; nothing earth-shaking, just an earthy hard-country shuffle served up by newcomer Wade Hayes. With a pleasantly muddy baritone and a hot hand on the electric guitar, he seemed like a good long-haul prospect for country’s more traditional wing. Scoring #1 with his debut single must have been encouraging, but it would be his only trip to the top, notching a few more top tens before fading off the charts a couple years later. I know it’s probably not as simple as this, but it sort of seems like he was replaced by Brad Paisley.

George Strait invested “You Can’t Make a Heart Love Somebody” with his usual heart and class, but it’s hardly an all-timer; I recall a non-country-fan college roommate pointing out that the central hook is kind of dumb, at least a little clunky, and I can’t say I didn’t see his point then or now. Clay Walker notched one of his better ones with the mid-tempo pleader “This Woman and This Man,” drawing on elements of old-school soul without getting out of his down-home depth. Trisha Yearwood was a considerably more flexible vocalist (not that the comparison’s especially relevant), incorporating a bit of R&B to a more slow-burn end with the romantic but chill “Thinkin’ About You.” Reba McEntire sounded vaguely Broadway-ish on “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” a pleasant enough performance but just not much meat on the bones.

That’s kind of how the year was going, at best: records that weren’t exactly bad, but were kind of hard to make a heart love. John Michael Montgomery’s “I Can Love You Like That” sounded like a chintzier follow-up to “I Swear,” complete with an alternate pop rendition by All-4-One (Montgomery, perhaps to his credit, was just too twangy to cross it over himself). Brooks & Dunn came out swinging with “Little Miss Honky Tonk,” a rockabilly-inflected cloud of check-out-my-gal dust, but it’s a pretty empty-calorie jam upon repeat listens. Mark Chesnutt’s “Gonna Get a Life” brings back the Cajun-fiddle inflections that served him well in the past, and it’s actually got a touch of emotional resonance under the drive; it was one of the year’s better tracks, but a couple years prior it might’ve seemed middling among stiffer competition.

The chart debut “What Mattered Most” by Ty Herndon tried a little harder, paying more attention to lyrical detail and nuance, ironically in service of a story about a guy who remembers superficial details about his love but just doesn’t “get” her enough to be emotionally available, I guess. Like an increasing number of songs on the chart, it sort of lives in an adult-contemporary limbo where it’s either no genre at all or several of them blended to such a smooth puree that the individual components are nearly undetectable: some ‘80s country-pop, a touch of adult-friendly heartland rock and pop-folk, vague hints of R&B, etc. It’s possible to do it well, and certainly to notch a hit with it, it’s just hard to get all that excited about. Clint Black, who seemed like a veteran warhorse at this point despite barely a half-decade on the charts, was getting increasingly guilty of genre-mashing; hard to fault the guy for following sincerely-felt influences, but he was just so good at the hard-country stuff that some of his divergences seemed disappointing. “Summer’s Coming” was hard to dislike, though, a nicely dynamic bit of twangy momentum with lyrics that were more clever than they needed to be. The video, which featured Black playing guitar in a wetsuit and black Stetson amidst various celebrity cameos and Howie Mandel as the protagonist, is an amusing slice of mid-‘90s cheese. By then Black was married to lovely soap opera actress Lisa Hartman, and the general impression was that he’d “gone Hollywood,” perhaps to his detriment. But hey, the song was #1 pretty much all of June ’95.

Speaking of music videos that were more memorable than the songs attached to them, Tracy Lawrence’s torchy but kinda-clunky “Texas Tornado” was accompanied by a mini-movie entry in the little series he had going of shameless Quantum Leap knockoffs where he time-travels into new scenarios requiring a mullet-headed dude in a duster coat to save the day. “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident” might either amuse or annoy the hell out you, depending on your mood going in, but it was nice to see John Michael Montgomery cut loose and go all-in on a straight-up country song – gimmicky or otherwise – after a string of wan pop ballads. The auctioneer theme lent itself well to the tune’s relentless upbeatness.

Shania Twain was about to get relentlessly upbeat on everyone’s ass too, to an even bigger impact. Twain, a model-gorgeous Canadian brunette with a hardscrabble backstory, had made the most minor of splashes a couple years prior with a self-titled debut album and a music video that featured her frolicking in a parka, perhaps a necessity if they were shooting in her native Ontario but a missed opportunity to showcase a truly world-changing belly button. Her reboot wouldn’t make the same mistake. Rock producer Mutt Lange was brought in to crank everything to the max, while still (probably begrudgingly) keeping some recognizable country fiddle high in the mix. They’d already primed the pump a little with the album’s lead-off single “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” but didn’t quite crack the top ten, so it was time to break out the big guns. The big, anthemic "Any Man of Mine" about a high-maintenance gal’s romantic preferences was pretty paint-by-numbers but it was also pretty beside-the-point next to the video. Spotlighting Twain shimmy-shaking in wholesomely sexy snug denim was obviously the right call; singing a song of vague female empowerment while also handing out the eye candy for the dudes was so savvy that women in various genres have never really stopped doing it since then. There had been plenty of attractive female country singers, but this was flat-out sex bomb territory, and aside from perhaps Dolly Parton we hadn’t been there too often.

I kind of wonder what Alan Jackson thought of it, aside from the obvious aesthetic appeal; he was up to his old tricks on the folksy, sort-of-funny “I Don’t Even Know Your Name,” which mostly just came off as an excuse to have Jeff Foxworthy ham it up in the video. Lorrie Morgan was finally getting to the point where she wasn’t mostly known as Keith Whitley’s widow; she’d stick around the charts awhile, but the highly forgettable resilience anthem “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength” was her last trip all the way to the top. Maybe we need to come up with a shorthand to describe songs like this one, “Not a Moment Too Soon,” “What Mattered Most” et al … how about NG/AG for “no-genre/all-genre”? Maybe it’ll catch on. Nashville’s definitely still cranking it out. Brooks & Dunn were sort of doing it too on “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone,” a rare lead-vocal turn on a single by Kix Brooks, but at least the specific influence was more obvious. It was a clear homage to early Eagles hits like “Tequila Sunrise” and “Lyin’ Eyes.” I guess the Eagles were pretty NG/AG themselves, but at least they were ahead of the game on it.   

Journeyman singer Jeff Carson was pretty unmistakably country, but didn’t really have time to establish much of a sound or persona in his short run at the charts; “Not on Your Love” is a sweet enough song about weathering some hard times in the name of enduring love, but it kind of felt like it could’ve been handed off to just about any other dude in mainstream country and worked just as well. Well, maybe not Bryan White …

Look, I might be critical or even sarcastic here and there. I try to couch that in reminders that anything negative said here is either just my opinion or a rehash of some commonly-held public sentiment, plus if something’s showing up here to be critiqued it means it obviously was very successful on some level and presumably a dream come true for some singer and/or songwriter. And I can acknowledge why it came true for Bryan White. When country music started taking a bigger piece of the pop-culture pie, it was pretty inevitable that pop marketing strategies were going to seep into the oft-insular logic of the Nashville machine, and it’d hardly be the first time. Billy Ray Cyrus and Shania Twain were two very recent examples of fishing for an instant pop-crossover sensation instead of the more organic true-to-form build that the last few years seemed to indicate we were getting back to.

But Bryan White was, for a lot of us listeners, a sign that mainstream country music was perhaps not for us anymore. That’s a pretty grizzled tack for a then-19-year-old me to take but it seemed like a common one. White was only very slightly older than that but looked and sounded about 14, with a borderline-soprano twang-free lilt of a voice that made Vince Gill sound like Waylon Jennings. “Someone Else’s Star” was a simpering bit of fluff with no snap, pulse, or relatability to it, seemingly only geared towards making even-younger females feel sympathetically affectionate to him. If you’ve ever seen any of those Simpsons episodes where Lisa gets a copy of Non-Threatening Boys magazine (a fictional parody of Tiger Beat and similar publications) it’s very easy to imagine White as the cover boy of one of those things. The dawn of the decade had given young women a chance to decide whether Garth, Clint, Alan or Travis were more their kind of guy … a lot of the slightly-older ones probably stuck with George Strait, but if the baby sisters (or daughters) felt left out then Bryan White was here for them now. And the demographic component of straight guys who, admittedly, are usually spoiled into thinking everything should be made for us? It was a pretty huge no-thanks.

Tim McGraw was also a warbly-tenor dude who courted a younger female audience, but was savvy enough to give “I Like It, I Love It” some relatable blue-collar charm with lines about Braves games and county fairs; I don’t love it or even particularly like it, but it was good enough for a five-week run that at least on paper made it seem like the year’s biggest hit. It might’ve seemed a bit lightweight but the man was laying groundwork to be a surprisingly durable star. The likes of Garth Brooks hadn’t faded, exactly (especially as live draws) but the first single off his ’95 release Fresh Horses wasn’t exactly lighting up the world. “She’s Every Woman” was the sort of James Taylor-esque balladry he just loved; it’s not bad, but it doesn’t really match either Brooks’ or Taylor’s best work, and despite taking more of a break between albums than the top country stars tended to at the time, the anticipation seemed tepid. Things were pretty ripe for guys like McGraw to swing in and plant their flag.

David Lee Murphy certainly tried to with one of the year’s better songs. He’d been knocking around as a club act and songwriter for a decade by now but he seemed like a good bet, with a pleasantly gritty twang and looks akin to a shaggier Elvis. A fine top ten hit called “Party Crowd” primed the pump for the even-better “Dust on the Bottle.” Both songs split the difference between redneck crowd-pleasers and sharp bits of writing; they felt lived-in and earthy in a way that already seemed to be disappearing from the charts, so it’s probably telling that Murphy didn’t stick around a little longer. George Strait had no dearth of staying power, but even he was a little off his game; I know a lot of of folks love “Check Yes Or No,” but I know a lot of other folks feel like I do about cutesy tales of grade-school sweethearts growing up and getting married. As country was starting to list back towards sort-of-sophisticated pop sounds, it was also leaning into sort of dumbed-down wholesomeness that was going to get worse, at least from the perspective of someone who didn’t come to country music for the wholesomeness.

Alan Jackson, God bless him, was trying his damnedest to hang on to what was being lost. It’s very gratifying that he was able to take an ancient George Jones/Roger Miller co-write called “Tall, Tall Trees” and climb it up to #1, updated for the times but just as fiddle-fueled and hearty as you could hope a country song to be. And when he passed the torch as the year drew to a close, he passed it to brawny blue-collar dude Aaron Tippin. “That’s as Close as I’ll Get to Loving You” sort of leaned to the creeping NG/AG approach but you’d have to shovel a lot more than that on Tippin’s twang to make it sound like anything other than a country song. It’s not an all-timer or anything, but it was a tale of sincere full-grown emotion delivered like his life depended on it. 1995 was a discouraging year, in some ways. But there are certainly worse notes to go out on.  

THE TREND?

I don’t mean to keep propping up the Class of ’89 like they were sainted keepers of the flame; they were talented mortal men who just happened to be on a creative roll at around the same time with the money of a burgeoning industry behind them. Folks making relatable, friendly music as the rock and rap worlds got all edgy and scary and alternative: what a concept, right? Maybe the business got greedy, maybe they learned the wrong lessons, maybe there were just too many cooks and carpetbaggers and whatever else it takes to shift back to sort of a middle-of-the-road mess. But when your NG/AG dabblings start striking gold, why not keep on it? Unless you’re concerned with reviving or at least preserving the sonic soul of a century-old genre, I guess. But just as “alternative” had taken over rock music, low-budget alternatives to mainstream country music were springing up in the club circuits and indie labels, often with an artistic drive towards revival, preservation, or – if we were going to expand things – in a direction of spiky experimentation and highly personal songwriting. It wouldn’t have much bearing on the Top 40. But if you were getting bored with the usual suspects, at least it gave you someplace new to go.   

THE RANKING

1. Gone Country – Alan Jackson
2. Tall, Tall Trees – Alan Jackson
3. Dust On the Bottle – David Lee Murphy
4. Gonna Get a Life – Mark Chesnutt
5. Summer’s Comin’ – Clint Black
6. She’s Every Woman – Garth Brooks
7. Not a Moment Too Soon – Tim McGraw
8. Old Enough to Know Better – Wade Hayes
9. Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life) – Pam Tillis
10. This Woman and This Man – Clay Walker
11. Check Yes Or No – George Strait
12. Any Man of Mine – Shania Twain
13. Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident) – John Michael Montgomery
14. I Like It, I Love It – Tim McGraw
15. That’s As Close As I’ll Get to Lovin’ You – Aaron Tippin
16. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Reba McEntire
17. Thinkin’ About You – Trisha Yearwood
18. Not On Your Love – Jeff Carson
19. You Can’t Make a Heart Love Somebody – George Strait
20. What Mattered Most – Ty Herndon
21. I Don’t Even Know Your Name – Alan Jackson
22. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone – Brooks & Dunn
23. I Didn’t Know My Own Strength – Lorrie Morgan
24. Little Miss Honky Tonk – Brooks & Dunn
25. Texas Tornado – Tracy Lawrence
26. I Can Love You Like That – John Michael Montgomery
27. My Kind of Girl – Collin Raye
28. Someone Else’s Star – Bryan White

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Starting to think we might be done with songs that have super-notable covers knocking around out there. Fair enough ... this stuff's pretty recent, the originals either loom large in the memory or are justifiably forgotten. But there's this genre-hopping dude from Philadelphia named Curt Chambers that I stumbled across who revisits '90s country hits in some really well-made videos and sounds like both a total pro and a pretty soulful dude while he's at it. There's no super-recent videos on his YouTube channel but I hope he found a good spot in the biz somewhere, I like his style. Here he is giving "Dust On the Bottle" the punch it deserves.

 

1994 - unwritten law, protocol, says to leave the past alone ...

Personal recollection here … 1994 was the year I graduated from high school. CDs were a thing but I hadn’t switched over yet, my ’81 Ford Ranger had a tape deck so cassettes were good enough. I had most of the Class of ’89 guys’ work, and a good chunk of the guys that followed in their wake, but I also remember branching out of my new-country bubble more than I had in a few years. Leaning harder on new offerings from older faves like Willie Nelson and Hank Jr. Immersing in big rock bands like the Black Crowes and Aerosmith, dabbling in hip-hop and grunge and metal, listening heavily to Steve Earle and Jimmy Buffett because I was getting deeper into songwriting. I guess part of that’s having slightly more money and freedom to pursue music, plus a friend group with diverse interests that could lead you several directions. And now that I’m sitting here looking at the list of #1s from 1994, I guess partly because mainstream country was already starting to lean kind of lame. Or at least lean in a different direction than my tastes were expanding.  

Faith Hill barreling out of the gate with her first #1, “Wild One,” and hanging in there for four straight weeks was a mixed blessing. She was certainly welcome on any man’s TV, and it was nice to see a female artist break through. But it was a middling tune, blandly written and not all that catchy, with only Hill’s charisma to buoy it. Similarly, Clay Walker’s “Live Until I Die” had a nice small-town vibe and Walker’s folksy delivery on its side, but it sounds like a first draft of something that could’ve been better or at least more personal. Then the next month-long reign is John Michael Montgomery with the florid ballad “I Swear,” which ended up being a crossover hit for the generic R&B-pop also-rans All-4-One. Folks were eating this stuff up, so you just knew you were gonna get more of it, but the spark of those initial hits from Garth, Clint, etc. already seemed pretty dimmed.

Then again, you could still get something like Mark Chesnutt’s winsome, heartfelt “I Just Wanted You to Know,” written by the underrated Tim Mensy, that would renew your faith that modern country music was still at least as country as it was modern. Vince Gill could go even sadder on “Tryin’ to Get Over You” and despite his cross-genre tenor leave you with no doubt that you were on the country station. I don’t know exactly how to elucidate the gulf between those songs and the following two #1 debuts, Neal McCoy’s “No Doubt About It” and Little Texas with “My Love.” But it seems palpable to me, a fluff quotient that’s getting gradually cranked up until it becomes the new norm. McCoy is still widely admired as a dynamic stage presence, and Little Texas could nail a country lament when they wanted to (their first single, “First Time For Everything,” is infinitely better), but their first trips to the top sure weren’t encouraging for a lot of us.

Tracy Lawrence was still unmistakably a country singer, distinct nasal twang and all; “If the Good Die Young” wasn’t among his most resonant works, but it kicked up enough dust to not wear out its welcome. Faith Hill was already back, this time with a cover of the Janis Joplin classic “Piece of My Heart” that took out all the bluesy pleading and replaced it with a smooth, self-assured sort-of-country groove. Nothing too exciting, but it did reveal that there were some good songwriting bones under the fevered emoting folks had come to love (check out the R&B original by Erma Franklin sometime, I just recently learned it exists but it absolutely smokes). Clint Black seemed to be losing the thread a bit sooner than his Class of ’89 fellows, in more danger of getting crowded out by the dudes popping up in their wake; “Good Run of Bad Luck” is pretty damn solid, a gambling metaphor underpinned by a Waylon-esque rumble and some spiky picking, but Black’s ambitious wordplay was getting a little ahead of what mainstream country listeners were into. I always respected the ambition but aspiring songwriters don’t make up most of the audience.

Hate to say it, but things were drifting more towards dreck like Shenandoah (who were capable of much better of course) with “If Bubba Can Dance.” A lame shout-out to the whole country-dance craze – line dancing included – it mostly just served as an excuse to make a music video with some burly dude in overalls busting a move. John Berry snuck in for his sole #1 with “Your Love Amazes Me,” seemingly trying to cut the scruffy charm of Travis Tritt with the schmaltz of a Collin Raye; he hung around the top ten for a year or so, sometimes with better songs than this one, a talented but kind-of-indistinct performer.

And then you get “Don’t Take the Girl,” a smash hit combo of a performer and format that would factor in heavily for a lifetime by pop-culture standards. Tim McGraw was a nice kid from Louisiana, the love child of a big-league baseball pitcher. He’d had a bit of a false start with solid but unsuccessful singles since late 1991, but his second album yielded the top ten novelty hit “Indian Outlaw” (that would emphatically not fly nowadays) and set him up to knock one out of the park with “Don’t Take the Girl.” A precision-tooled piece of WTAC (Wholesome Three Act Country) delivered in the young McGraw’s earnest tenor warble, it moistened the eyes of good-natured country gals of all ages across the nation and set in motion one of the genre-defining careers of the next mini-era. When he and fellow ’94 breakthrough Faith Hill hooked up, procreated, married etc. the down-home glamor was almost more than fans could even handle: country music had a new royal family, y’all. The two are currently starring in a Yellowstone prequel about distractingly-recognizable good-looking middle-aged people surviving on the harsh frontier (I haven’t seen it, I’m making some assumptions here).

Brooks & Dunn continued to be leading lights, and “Ain’t No Way to Go” is a nicely urgent bit of heartland-rock-infused mainstream country. The influence of mainstream adult-friendly rockers like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, Tom Petty etc. was definitely seeping into country music, a welcome counterpoint to the easy-listening stuff. Maybe there’s a whiff of that in Neal McCoy’s too-cute-for-me “Wink.” It’s offset by some cornball lyrics and McCoy’s grit-adverse delivery, but audiences didn’t seem to mind: with a four-week run at #1, it was as big a hit as any in 1994. Travis Tritt’s relatively profound “Foolish Pride” continued his trend of scoring big enough with stormy ballads that he could indulge his onstage motorcycle-rocker tendencies well into the present day. It was from the same album as “Outlaws Like Us” – never released as a single, but it did get some radio play – where he was joined by Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr. in a pass-the-torch moment a lot of artists would kill for. Despite the votes of confidence, this would be his last #1 for the decade; he didn’t go away, or even fade all that much, it just speaks to how crowded the field was getting at the top.

Alan Jackson remained on a less-interrupted roll. A cover of the Eddie Cochran oldie “Summertime Blues” was good enough for a three-week run at the top, a reminder of the innocent side of early rock & roll that a lot of boomers probably disproportionately preferred to remember. John Michael Montgomery was fairly well-established at this point, and the sugar-rush hoedown of “Be My Baby Tonight” was just the right kind of lightweight catchy for a summer hit. Clay Walker’s “Dreaming With My Eyes Open,” penned by Tony Arata (best-known for Garth’s “The Dance”), was more thoughtful but kept the sunny uptempo vibe going as summer drifted into autumn.       

And Randy Travis, bless him, was kind of in the autumn of his career … only in his mid-30s, a year younger than Alan Jackson or Neal McCoy but with the surprising disadvantage of seeming like he’d been around forever by ’94. Plus he was getting dogged by rumors about his private life, to the point where he was compelled to make some public denials; time would make it clear that his background and personal life was much messier than his wholesome public image suggested, although nothing ever confirmed those sorts of rumors specifically. I’m sure they still didn’t help, given the era and genre. Anyway, “Whisper Your Name” is a beautiful tune, hearty and poetic and a great fit for Travis’ sonorous voice; it’s cool that it caught on in a year when things seemed to be dumbing down a bit. But zigging while the rest zag is always a gamble, and putting out meditative numbers like this might’ve reinforced the younger audience’s sentiment that Randy Travis was someone their parents listened to, who looked and sounded older than the competition and was getting harder to two-step to. This wasn’t his last #1, but it’d be the last for quite some time. All that being said, Trisha Yearwood could speak to an older crowd raised on Aretha Franklin and Patsy Cline on an upbeat, vaguely statement-y song like “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl)” and still sound fresh enough. Trends aren’t absolutes, of course.

Redneck humor had kind of piggybacked on the country music explosion; Jeff Foxworthy was probably America’s biggest comedian for a few years there, and though country songs were incorporating folksy humor well before even Hee Haw you could sort of see the influence of Foxworthy and the like seeping into some of the contemporary songwriting. Joe Diffie had a beautiful tenor twang that could elevate a heartfelt ballad without overdoing it, but he needed upbeat lightweight stuff too I guess. Hence the clunky likes of “Third Rock From the Sun,” a twisty small-town slice-of-life narrative that’s sort of humorous, I guess, if not exactly laugh-out-loud funny. Toby Keith played it straight on “Who’s That Man,” a nicely detailed divorced-dad anthem that I’m sure struck a chord with every well-meaning dude out there whose marriage just didn’t work out. Brooks & Dunn hit that hard-country/heartland rock balance again with “She’s Not the Cheatin’ Kind,” a worthy entry in a long line of country songs that acknowledge the age-old truth that hurt people hurt people.

Alan Jackson continued to be a force for good in the world with “Livin’ On Love,” a sweet-but-not-saccharine country lope about a couple of wholesome young lovers who made it to their golden years without the cheatin’ or divorcin’ or other bummers that preceded it on the charts. As with most of his self-penned tunes, there’s some nice lyrical detail and quirky rhymes in there (“it takes more than marble and tile …”) to give it a personal touch beyond filler. And then we got the first and only #1 from Mary Chapin Carpenter, which is a little surprising because she was an unconventionally big deal in the era … 1992’s “I Feel Lucky,” in particular, seemed like one of the bigger hits of the day but it peaked at #4. “Shut Up and Kiss Me” got her all the way, though … it was similarly cheeky, with enough attitude to give it spark but nothing off-putting. MCC wasn’t glamorous and didn’t try to be; she was born in Jersey, got a degree at Brown University and came up playing folk clubs in Washington DC. Her ending up in the country genre at all, much less being a fixture in the top ten for a few years, seems almost like it happened by mistake. She dressed and looked like a vaguely hip kindergarten teacher but she was a gifted vocalist and a smart songwriter on par with Rosanne Cash. “Shut Up and Kiss Me” takes a big bite of Warren Zevon’s quirky classic rocker “Werewolves of London” but it’s fun on its own merits, a down-to-earth gal flaunting some assertive sex appeal.

Clay Walker swung in for another hit with “If I Could Make a Living,” about as generic an upbeat traditional-country tune as anyone ever recorded; Alan Jackson co-wrote it but tellingly didn’t bother recording it himself. George Strait classed up the joint considerably with the shuffling charm of “The Big One,” which is kind of generic too I suppose but had a way better hook and, of course, a more seasoned vocalist. Generic was working: John Michael Montgomery’s “If You’ve Got Love” was blander than a Big Mac but it punched in at #1 for a week as well. The year closed out with reliable ol’ Joe Diffie, cornballin’ it up with the relentless truck punnery of “Pickup Man.” Stacked up against stuff like “Is it Cold in Here,” “Ships That Don’t Come In,” and “John Deere Green,” it certainly wasn’t his best hit. But it was his biggest, and that kind of told on where things were going with the genre: the broader your approach, be it comedy or sentimentality, the better your chances.       

THE TREND?

The promise of the decade’s turn hadn’t soured commercially, but artistically … look, different strokes for different folks, but this looks even more discouraging in hindsight than it did in the moment. Check out the top five or ten in the rankings down there … if more than a couple of them seem more “great!” than “good enough” to you then your glass is even more half-full than mine. Garth Brooks more or less sat out ’94, at least release-wise, and even though he was probably bigger than the chart at this point you can kind of see the business scrambling to fill the gap: lots of dudes with cowboy hats taking their best shot at something between folksy charm and larger-than-life emotion. These are fine things for music to aspire to, but it takes a certain talent and charisma to do them in a way that holds up past the country-chart shelf life. There was sure as hell money to be made in Nashville, but there was also momentum to be maintained; nobody should’ve been coming off desperate already at this point, but if you look close you can see some of the compromises desperation can beget. 

THE RANKING 

1. I Just Wanted You to Know – Mark Chesnutt
2. The Big One – George Strait
3. Whisper My Name – Randy Travis
4. Livin’ On Love – Alan Jackson
5. Tryin’ to Get Over You – Vince Gill
6. Piece of My Heart – Faith Hill
7. She’s Not the Cheatin’ Kind – Brooks & Dunn
8. A Good Run of Bad Luck – Clint Black
9. Shut Up and Kiss Me – Mary Chapin Carpenter
10. Foolish Pride – Travis Tritt
11. Dreaming With My Eyes Open – Clay Walker
12. XXXs and OOO’s (An American Girl) – Trisha Yearwood
13. That Ain’t No Way to Go – Brooks & Dunn
14. Who’s That Man – Toby Keith
15. Don’t Take the Girl – Tim McGraw
16. Pickup Man – Joe Diffie
17. Third Rock From the Sun – Joe Diffie
18. Summertime Blues – Alan Jackson
19. Be My Baby Tonight – John Michael Montgomery
20. Live Until I Die – Clay Walker
21. If You’ve Got Love – John Michael Montgomery
22. Wild One – Faith Hill
23. Wink – Neal McCoy
24. Your Love Amazes Me – John Berry
25. I Swear – John Michael Montgomery
26. If the Good Die Young – Tracy Lawrence
27. If I Could Make a Living – Clay Walker
28. No Doubt About It – Neal McCoy
29. If Bubba Can Dance (I Can Too) - Shenandoah
30. My Love – Little Texas

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Hey, wanna feel old? Of course you do! 

It's not all that often a major pop or rock star announces they want to delve into their classic-country roots, at least not anymore (we're a long way from the Byrds, Ray Charles, The Band etc.). So when they do it's kind of a big deal, especially considering how far the sound of most big-time pop and rock has diverged from anything resembling old-school country.

But keep in mind that one person's teenage memory is another person's deep dive into a distant past. In this case that first person is me and that second person is likably offbeat pop-rock sensation Post Malone. Sure, he's from Texas, and occasionally rocks a cowboy hat to give those face tattoos a little shade, but when it came to light that he was up for dabbling in country music some skepticism was in order from fans of both a) classic country music and b) Post Malone. 

It never occurred to me to think that a guy almost 20 years younger than me might have a different idea of what classic country is than I would, but Joe Diffie's "Pickup Man" came out the year before "Posty" was born. The year before I was born, Willie & Waylon's "outlaw" movement caught fire and folks like Freddy Fender and Charley Pride were burning up the charts. So hey, fair enough, plus Diffie's untimely passing a few years back might spur a little premature nostalgia for his catalog (for the record, I don't think "Pickup Man" is a great song, but some of his others certainly were). The HIXTAPE projects aren't just a Post Malone thing - other contemporary artists like HARDY and Morgan Wallen are in the hixmix too - but his participation was probably the most newsworthy.