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