2002 - did you open your eyes and hope it never happened ...

I think as a listener I had more than one foot out the door of mainstream country circa 2002. Probably sooner, really, but running down this year’s list I’m seeing more of the songs and acts that had me thinking this maybe wasn’t for me anymore. I was getting deeper into trying to be a songwriter myself but wasn’t hearing much on country radio that made me wish I’d written it myself, aside from the financial considerations. Aside from the Alan Jackson CD I don’t think I owned any of the albums the 2002 songs came from; I was pretty deep into the alt-country and independent Texas/Oklahoma regional artists, plus digging back into the catalogs of Willie Nelson and John Prine and Bob Dylan and whoever else I thought might spur me on to better directions as a writer. If I was listening to country it was passive listening, mostly at the day job. Most of the stuff I liked wasn’t on the radio and I couldn’t really get away with hard rock or hip-hop at work. And some of this stuff could make work seem like a chore.

But most of it’s not that bad. No point in being a grouch. Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” remains an admirable example of combining introspection with empathy, bringing an audience in on your own thoughts and feelings, a plainspoken “we’re all in this together” with vulnerability and faith. Songs with this sort of gravity often make an odd choice for radio singles – usually a couple of listens to a tear-jerking message song is plenty, you get the point and move on – but I feel like people needed to hear this at the time.

They probably could’ve done without Steve Holy and “Good Morning Beautiful,” but tough shit I guess. On his first single “Don’t Make Me Beg,” Holy seemed like he might’ve been a rockabilly-tinged throwback, but nah. “GMB” is as generic, saccharine and pillowy-soft as it gets. His voice wasn’t actively irritating but it was as forgettable as Ty Herndon and Mark Wills and Chad Brock and whoever else had gotten a handful of interchangeable hits without leaving any discernible impression. One can be trained to sing well, of course, but having a distinctive voice with some personality to it is hard, and probably sometimes discouraged by labels and producers to the detriment of the artist. Jo Dee Messina didn’t have a ton of distinction to her voice either I guess, but she had a good enough one to blend with the more-distinctive voice of her buddy Tim McGraw on the lovely, resilient “Bring on the Rain.” Despite the twangy add-on, this one managed to crack the Adult Contemporary top ten as well.

Tim McGraw solo was up next with “The Cowboy in Me.” It’s a bit self-serious, but cowboy mythology and ethos is a big business and perhaps the big-budget sonic aesthetic is as sincere a way as any to honor it. Brooks & Dunn’s “The Long Goodbye” was similarly grandiose but much more heartache-y in sentiment, a masterclass of vocal empathy from Ronnie Dunn, covering a number by rootsy Irish singer-songwriter Paul Brady. The specter of 9/11 hung so heavy over everything it’s hard to not read into songs about resilience or mourning, adding subtext after the fact to songs that were almost undoubtedly written before it all went down. Was Martina McBride’s “Blessed” just another fluffy, cheerful bit of throw-pillow country-pop or gratitude in the face of tragedy, served with a stiff upper lip? Was newcomer Chris Cagle’s heartsick “I Breathe In, I Breathe Out” just another post-breakup wallow or a self-healing mantra in the aftermath of trauma and loss? Even the easygoing ramble of Toby Keith’s “My List,” ostensibly about an overworked dad reassessing his priorities, took on a little extra life-is-short weight in context.

Singing about your kids was getting more and more pervasive; it was like they were trying to follow the teens and young adults the Class of ’89 brought aboard milestone for milestone instead of putting much focus on drawing in a new mini-generation of young fans. Alan Jackson had led the previous charge and remained on board with the content trend, even if he was stauncher than most at sticking to more traditional sounds. “Drive (For Daddy Gene)” was a pleasantly earnest bit about everyday lessons passed from generation to generation, wrapped up tidily in metaphors about cars and boats. George Strait didn’t get into parenting this time around with “Living and Living Well,” but the message was that getting happily settled down was a better way to go than a carefree (read: selfish) solo existence. Brad Paisley, one of the few newbies that felt like someone who could be a successor to the Straits and Jacksons of the world, sort of bucked the family-friendly trend with “I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin’ Song).” An extended riff on an old novelty t-shirt joke, it’s a folksy singalong about a guy who responds to his wife’s ultimatum about his incessant fishing by going fishing. At least he didn’t snag her purse and force her to dance with him in hopes of getting it back.

But so much for lighthearted humor for awhile. Toby Keith’s big statement song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” might’ve had some dark humor in the lyrics but, thematically, it was somewhere between a chest-beating call to arms and a threatening scowl across the ocean. In the wake of 9/11, you didn’t need to be a conservative firebrand to feel righteous anger at terrorists; vengeful justice was a pretty common shared wish. Sometimes that sort of un-nuanced contempt spilled over to whole races or regions or religions and that’s not right, of course. And of course some pundits took the tack of painting Keith as an opportunistic bigmouth, but there was little reason to think his patriotism was insincere; he was one of the most enthusiastic entertainers when it came to visiting and performing for American troops overseas when he could’ve been richer and safer back home. None of that makes this an especially good song though, and this sort of vague rally-cry stuff probably went past troops feeling appreciated to swaying the public towards giving the U.S. government a free pass on any questionable moves going forward. But, much of a cultural lightning rod as he was suddenly willing to be, this is all a much bigger discussion than Toby Keith.  

Sort of surprisingly, that was only #1 for a week anyway, succeeded by the much more peaceful “The Good Stuff” by Kenny Chesney. Chesney had already established himself as a specialist in lightweight breeziness but here he dove into the hard-country tradition of songs about hard-earned barroom wisdom; he may have been no Vern Gosdin vocally, but he did well enough with a tale about a discouraged young husband given perspective by a widower bartender to hang at #1 for a full seven weeks. It’s a little weird that him and the bartender end up drinking milk (wtf, right?) but otherwise the story rings true enough and Chesney’s lightweight delivery makes sense if he’s casting himself as the youngster in the tale. When Tim McGraw finally broke the streak with “Unbroken” it was a considerably poorer fit of artist and material; maybe the glossy arena-rock thing sounded good live on tour, but on record the track sounded clunky and the singer sounded overwhelmed. It sounds like something from late-era Bon Jovi, and not in a good way, but at least Jon Bon’s vocals would’ve fit the bill.

Newcomer Darryl Worley, in contrast, seemed unlikely to tread into arena-rock waters anytime soon. He was already a couple top-20 hits into his career and scored his first #1 with the spare, ruminative “I Miss My Friend.” It was a modest, well-crafted bit of twilit twang from a guy who seemed like he might fit alongside Brad Paisley in a mini-boom of artists stripping things back down to relative basics. Not really retro, just kind of a course-correction … it didn’t change the business, but at least it kept some room at the table for the likeminded. Diamond Rio had some built-in rootsiness with their bluegrass-inspired harmonies, but “Beautiful Mess” was suburban country all the way, This kind of flexibility probably helped them stick around as long as they did, but the forgettable love song pretty much evaporated the moment it left the charts.

When you’re only looking at lists of #1s, Tracy Byrd in 2002 probably seems like a typo. He hadn’t hit #1 since around his debut in 1993, but he never really went away or even stumbled much. He was a fairly regular visitor to the top ten or thereabouts, not unlike other folks like Sammy Kershaw or Trisha Yearwood or whoever that came out around the same time. It was just a crowded field and – though this might be hard to believe, considering some of the middling junk that did break through – it was pretty damn hard to climb all the way to the top. But the good-time drinking song “Ten Rounds With Jose Cuervo” did the trick for him. He might’ve had to make a gradual lean into bigger production and gimmicky songs, but he was hanging in there. It would’ve been hard to argue at this point, though, that he had much of a shelf life left with guys like Keith Urban busting through. The male model-esque Aussie landed an absolute smash with “Somebody Like You,” which somehow managed to sound like a total pop crossover number even though the video is mostly Urban photogenically picking a banjo, which also figures prominently into the song’s mix. I recall getting tired of it at the time, but really it’s not bad. It actually sounds pretty invigorating when you only hear it once or twice a year instead of several times a day during its six-week run at #1.

And anyway it was practically George Strait next to those Rascall Flatts guys that I guess we always knew we’d end up having to talk about. If we’re just talking their first #1 “These Days” then I probably sound like a premature grouch, it’s not my cup of tea but it’s not actively irritating. One did certainly get the feeling though that with their trebly harmonies, big-production genrelessness and youthfully crafted images that they were mainstream country’s non-subtle attempt to reflect the boy-band craze going around in mainstream pop. Granted, the likes of Backstreet Boys and N’Sync had been around for a few years at this point, but Nashville’s used to being a few steps behind any given pop trend.

So it was nice to have a couple of relatively grown-ass folks closing out the year. Toby Keith sat aside the patriotic bravado for the easygoing charm of “Who’s Your Daddy?,” which was way more cheerful and less cocky than the title suggests. Dude was having a moment, obviously, although like most things it was a blip next to chart warhorse for the ages George Strait. Strait’s “She’ll Leave You With a Smile” was a sad little wink of a song, an ode to a woman who’d break your heart but was such a fun fling it’d be worth it. It was Strait’s 38^th #1 hit on the Billboard charts and, oddly, got as high as #23 on the all-genre Hot 100 despite not being notably retooled towards anything pop. Unlike other lifers who’d had to resort to gimmicks or major tweaks to their approach or image, Strait being Strait remained enough to be relevant in a shifting less-country country music landscape. A lot of stuff was popping up that wasn’t to the taste of listeners like me. Just like it was in the early ‘80s when he sprung up as a vibrantly traditional voice amidst the encroaching schmaltz, Strait’s presence among the success stories seemed like a sign that maybe things weren’t so bad. But unlike those earlier days, by 2002 you had to worry just how long guys like him could hold down the fort.   

THE TREND?

Maybe I’m leaning too hard on the 9/11 aftermath stuff here (at least in the country-music-chart context). Toby Keith’s “Angry American” tune was a bigger cultural talking point than it was a hit, and aside from that and the Alan Jackson song everything else that met the moment sort of did so accidentally. The more pedestrian observation here would be that things seemed to be taking an inexorable turn towards the corny and schmaltzy, with chucklehead semi-novelty numbers and florid love songs taking up quite a bit of space. The stuff that wasn’t about the cultural upheaval of the day didn’t feel like it’d be relevant for much longer than the material that was. Maybe the industry figured people just needed a lightweight distraction in between the grim news updates. But then again, this trend towards material that’s somehow both lazy and overdone had been in motion for a while.

THE RANKING 

1. Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) – Alan Jackson
2. The Long Goodbye – Brooks & Dunn
3. Bring on the Rain – Jo Dee Messina with Tim McGraw
4. I Miss My Friend – Darryl Worley
5. She’ll Leave You With a Smile – George Strait
6. Drive (For Daddy Gene) – Alan Jackson
7. Living and Living Well – George Strait
8. The Cowboy in Me – Tim McGraw
9. Who’s Your Daddy – Toby Keith
10. The Good Stuff – Kenny Chesney
11. Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) – Toby Keith
12. I Breathe In, I Breathe Out – Chris Cagle
13. Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo – Tracy Byrd
14. Somebody Like You – Keith Urban
15. I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin’ Song) – Brad Paisley
16. My List – Toby Keith
17. Blessed – Martina McBride
18. These Days – Rascall Flatts
19. Beautiful Mess – Diamond Rio
20. Unbroken – Tim McGraw
21. Good Morning Beautiful - Steve Holy

DOWN THE ROAD ...

"Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning" was such an of-the-moment song - and so tied to its well-respected originator Alan Jackson - that it hasn't inspired a ton of cover versions, at least professionally (seems like an odd one to float out on a bar-band gig). But a rudimentary search shows that it popped up on one of the highest-profile stages of all, even if I didn't happen to be watching at the time: American Idol. The show that gave us Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson lost its star-launcher rep for the most part after those early triumphs, but occasionally an eventual mainstream star would get an early boost from the singing competition show. Scotty McCreery's was the final winner of the show's tenth season in 2011, but at least within the country-radio bubble his career actually started its (still-going-pretty-well) crest about a half-decade later. He's had five #1 hits and several other top tens, including just last year (2023) .... I don't think this little writing project is going to go past the 2012 chart split, but if we did we'd be talking about McCreery quite a bit I guess. Anyhow, here's him putting some respect on the Jackson landmark in his American Idol days.  

Josh Varnes doesn't have any #1 hits as of this writing, but he shared McCreery's willingness to cover a timely song years down the line for an appreciative audience. He went with the angrier Toby Keith song (and a more down-to-earth living-room setting) and, for what it's worth, looks like he could back it up if he needed to. He's got at least a couple dozen covers on his YouTube page and is a solid picker and singer, it's not unthinkable he could have a big hit of his own someday soon.

2001 - feels like this world left you far behind ...

Maybe 2000 was the nadir, right? It’s probably hard to imagine nowadays if you weren’t there, but that Y2K stuff was messing with a lot of people’s heads. Felt like we were in for a long stretch of technical difficulties at best, if not some end-times cataclysm. Perhaps a couple more decades of social media and 24/7 news cycles have normalized mass anxiety but back then it was kind of new to a lot of people who were too young to remember the previous constant-threat-of-nuclear-war boogeyman. People were probably having a hard time concentrating on making good country music, but now it was 2001 and we were more or less okay and it’d probably be smooth sailing, right?

No, of course. The previous year’s presidential election was pretty friendly by modern-day standards but ended in recounts and controversy, eventually narrowly handed to Bush in a move that was widely seen as pretty suspect (at least by the folks that lost, as these things tend to go). Social media hadn’t kicked in but the internet was in pretty wide use by now so the same sort of stuff that pisses off normal people on social media was kicking around email chains and message boards and stuff like that. And of course 2001 was the year of 9/11, the biggest “never forget, as if you could” moment of most of our American lifetimes. I’m not going to get into the bottomless tragedy and ongoing aftermath of it all here, but suffice it to say it was so enormous that even the normally culture-war-averse country music charts couldn’t ignore it.

Much of Nashville, like much of America (if less so recently), prefers to give off the public impression of being apolitical or at least moderate. In the ranks of the bigger country artists and power brokers there appears to be a mostly non-vocal minority of relative liberals who choose to not rock the boat lest their careers capsize, and a likely majority of conservatives who (with a few notable exceptions) keep their politics low-key and polite, perhaps confident that their viewpoint is the prevalent one in town and with much of the nationwide audience anyway. Not much incentive to rock the boat when you’re already steering it. Explicitly political songs tend to end up either being the stuff of novelty acts and has-beens desperate for attention or artists big enough to have the confidence (hubris?) to feel like their sentiments will be heard and helpful. Much like in present day politics, there’s just not much middle ground. Anyway, on to the songs.

Tim McGraw’s cheerfully self-analyzing “My Next Thirty Years” hung on for the first two weeks before ceding to Sara Evans’ similarly sunny “Born to Fly.” It was twangy around the edges but with a certain widescreen pop appeal that was all the rage amongst mainstream front-runners at the time; she looked really nice in the color-saturated Wizard of Oz-themed video, occasionally drawing from Shania Twain’s navel-sporting playbook. The Dixie Chicks also took the opportunity to flesh out a song’s meaning with a video. “Without You” was a typical (but lovely) lost-love lament with just enough hint of ambiguity to apply to other grievous losses; the video featured a pregnant actress whose newborn son shortly thereafter ended up surviving less than a week. The actress asked that, instead of her part being edited out, the video be used in part to memorialize the child alongside its general theme of vulnerability and human frailty.

Lonestar didn’t have a ton of personality or cohesion to their sound; “Tell Her” wasn’t bad as far as 00’s country-pop goes (faint praise, I know) and it did have a bit of minor-key intrigue and urgency to it. There just wasn’t much reason to be optimistic it’d signify a whole new direction or anything. Oddly, contemporary country’s new direction was suddenly pointed towards Australia, of all places. First you had Jamie O’Neal with the smoky, vaguely haunting “There is No Arizona.” An ominous ballad about a strung-along lover – perhaps a belated sequel to Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn” – the sonics and O’Neal’s breathy delivery were a fine fit for the material. Her countrified countryman Keith Urban was way more chill on “But For the Grace of God,” a steel-laced easy-rolling number about a happily coupled-up dude’s gratitude at being spared the fate of his quarrelsome neighbors or that lonely old guy that’s always wandering around town. O’Neal and Urban weren’t exactly Haggard acolytes but they sounded about as country as anyone else on the charts at the moment. Not a great curve to grade on, but apparently an easy one for a couple of photogenic Aussies to climb. O’Neal ended up being a bit of a blip; Urban would grow into one of the most commercially successful singers of their generation.

Toby Keith didn’t use the success of “How Do You Like Me Now?” as an excuse for consistent belligerence just yet; “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This” was a nicely swoony slow-dance soundtrack, tastefully put together and sung with hearty conviction by a guy who was always a more versatile songwriter than he probably gets credit for. “One More Day” brought Diamond Rio to the next round of their occasional step to the forefront, another solid example of the sort of ambiguous lost-love songs like “Without You” that often get deputized into even sadder moments; the song was used in tributes when NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt died, and would certainly pop up again a few months down the line in the wake of all the 9/11 deaths. Diamond Rio and Toby Keith handed the #1 spot back and forth a couple times throughout March.

Despite the ongoing drift back to being music for the middle-aged and settled-down, you’d see the occasional initiative to bring younger listeners into the fold. Jessica Andrews was already two albums into a career yet only in her late teens when “Who I Am” hit the top spot, and it was probably exactly the sort of jangly wholesome country-pop that some key swaths of her non-famous contemporaries needed to hear. The youth initiative didn’t stick, though: this was the last time she’d even crack the top ten, quickly ceding to a six-week run for the relatively dad-country Brooks & Dunn and “Ain’t Nothing ‘bout You.” It had the urgent pulse of most of their uptempo numbers but felt paint-by-numbers in the writing, trying to kick up some romantic heat but landing a bit lukewarm. Kenny Chesney, meanwhile, was more or less lukewarm for life; “Don’t Happen Twice” was supposed to conjure up youthful summer romance but in its airless production and listless delivery comes off about as hot as day-old coffee. Chesney’s buddy and rival Tim McGraw hit his aim considerably better on “Grown Men Don’t Cry,” a vulnerable number about letting the little joys and regrets and tragedies of life go ahead and move you instead of being unnecessarily stoic. Over the years he’d prove to be a good hand at this sort of sensitive material, but even with the better ones you kind of wonder why people wanted to hear it over and over on the radio.

That goes triple for Lonestar and “I’m Already There.” Spending six weeks at #1, it was their biggest hit since the generic devotion of “Amazed.” While that song could’ve been about anything from infatuated young love to a decades-long marriage, their latest joint was more specific, a hardworking father calling from the road and assuring his wife and children that in some sort of metaphysical love-conquers-all way he’s actually home with them, in the sunlight and moonlight and whispers in the wind and stuff. Seems like an odd cop-out, but it probably felt pretty relevant and self-assuring to a band that was undoubtedly pretty booked up road-wise in the wake of “Amazed” (it was co-written by lead singer Richie McDonald). This topped the charts for half of June and all of July, so yeah 2001 country’s Song of the Summer was a maudlin number about a dad calling his family. Look, I’m all about sad country songs, from multiple eras and approaches. But the more the genre tried to go crowd-pleasing pop, the more the emotionally-fraught stuff started to seem forced and out-of-place.   

Jamie O’Neal was cooperatively singing “I swear I hear you in the whispers in the wind” in the unintentional sequel “When I Think About Angels.” It was an upbeat, affectionate number, theoretically well-crafted but without much meat on the bone. Still, between her striking good looks and country-pop smarts, O’Neal seemed to be giving contemporary Nashville all it could ask for, so it’s odd how quickly and completely she was ushered off the charts after her second and final #1. Then again, new competition was popping up every day; Blake Shelton scored his first #1 with “Austin” and it was pretty huge, a five-week run at the top. The song’s got a whiff of ludicrousness to it: the plotline centers around a dude’s unusually long, specific, and emotionally resonant outgoing answering machine messages, something that would probably totally be lost on a young listener revisiting it today. But still, it was more straight-country in approach and delivery than 90% or so of the year’s big hits, and Shelton’s earnest Oklahoma drawl showed a lot of promise. It didn’t immediately entrench him in the genre’s top tier: he followed up with some middling singles and took a couple years to really establish himself as more than a one-hit wonder. Eventually a prolonged reality TV gig on The Voice and a couple of high-profile marriages would make him among the genre’s biggest celebrities; figured I’d go ahead and mention that in case the next few years of 2000s country shuts this thing down for good.

“Austin” hung in there until early September, at which point 9/11 turned the nation upside down. At this point in my life I was working in a chemistry lab, often solo, and often with the radio on all day for company and I can attest that there didn’t seem to be much music on at all for quite some time. When they did pause the news updates and presidential statements for music it seemed like a frivolous afterthought. Toby Keith’s upbeat, humorous come-on number “I’m Just Talkin’ About Tonight” was pretty good but hardly the sort of song to meet the moment; it was just a little distraction already presumably wedged into the playlists before things got seriously dark. A young newcomer named Cyndi Thomson swept in next with the big swoony ballad “What I Really Meant to Say.” Thomson was model-gorgeous, had a nicely soulful edge to her voice, and the song was straightforward enough but earned its big-production framing with some hearty delivery. Maybe it was kind of a #1 by default in that autumn 2001 climate, but it still seemed pretty damn promising; counterintuitively, her next couple of singles fell short and she was more or less out of the business a year or two later, even publicly expressing in a letter to her fans that the pressures of touring and self-promotion just weren’t for her.

Perhaps a reeling nation needed to bask in the comfort of relatively old favorites for a bit. Alan Jackson landed back on top with the bluesy kick of “Where I Come From,” a fairly lighthearted number about back-to-basics life that might’ve caught a little unintended relevance among the sectors of the audience that had already switched to stubborn identity-based resilience as a response to the terrorist attacks. The verses are appealingly offbeat – Jackson was better than most at maintaining a personal touch in an increasingly generic environment – but the chorus is pretty standard blue-collar southern-pride stuff without being obnoxious about it. Similarly, Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America” wasn’t a bit of overdone chest-thumping patriotism, it was just an affectionate upbeat slice-of-life number. And of course it was written and produced prior to 9/11, but that chorus sure hit different in the aftermath. I’m retroactively surprised it was only #1 for a week.

One nice surprise amidst everything was Tim McGraw’s release of “Angry All the Time.” The song was penned by Bruce Robison, already a big regional favorite in Texas songwriting circles (which was most of my focus back at that moment). He’d already released a sublime take on it with his wife Kelly Willis on harmonies and McGraw recruited his even-more-famous wife to do the same. It’s a sad, even depressing number chronicling a marriage unraveled by the husband’s encroaching, unexplainable bitterness, tackling the difficult truth that people just sometimes change inexorably for the worse. Hell of a time to put out something this downbeat, but it snagged #1 nonetheless.

Toby Keith would soon steer hard into the cultural moment, but he still had an existing album cycle to get through and “I Wanna Talk About Me” was the sort of lighthearted distraction it’s easier to imagine catching on. It sat at #1 for five weeks; some observers that had been willing to let various degrees of country-pop slide were chagrined that this one seemed to be influenced by outright rap. It kind of is, with Keith rattling off lists of things his gal rattles on about in sort of a hip-hop cadence. I’d say it still falls short of actual rap (or, thankfully, outright misogyny) but qualifies as harmless dumb fun.

Alan Jackson, meanwhile, became the first major country artist to meet the moment intentionally and specifically with “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).” A couple of months is already a pretty tight turnaround time, but his searching, soothing anthem had already been on the radio in a live-recorded form from the CMA Awards show in early November. The official version was a no-brainer to top the charts, but intelligent and sensitive in its craft and message. Acknowledging that the events and aftermath of 9/11 could inspire anything from grief to paranoia to distraction to gratitude, it managed to feel 100% relevant without any bitter whiffs of exploitation or self-aggrandizement. Most of its run at the top would be in 2002 so we’ll talk about it more soon enough.      

THE TREND?

It’d be ridiculous to try to talk about 2001 in any avenue of American culture without mentioning 9/11, but to be fair with the exception of the last song of the year we’re talking about stuff that was written and recorded before the terroristic tragedies. Before the resultant grief and anger and paranoia had initiated, much less sunk in. But it did hang some additional gravity on songs ranging from “One More Day” to “Only in America” to “I’m Already There,” whether they deserved it or not. The nation’s political maneuvers and foreign actions in the aftermath, not to mention the increasing public voice that the internet was starting to offer almost everyone, would soon enough lead to an increased pressure to pick a side and cling to an identity. That sort of thing would resonate in the country music business soon enough, but for the moment folks wanted something sad enough to commiserate with or charming enough to distract. Not much of what topped the charts in 2001 would go down in the pantheon of truly great country music, but at least there was enough to fill those needs.

THE RANKING

1. Angry All the Time – Tim McGraw
2. Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) – Alan Jackson
3. What I Really Meant to Say – Cyndi Thomson
4. Without You – The Dixie Chicks
5. Grown Men Don’t Cry – Tim McGraw
6. I’m Just Talkin’ About Tonight – Toby Keith
7. Born to Fly – Sara Evans
8. Only in America – Brooks & Dunn
9. You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This – Toby Keith
10. Where I Come From – Alan Jackson
11. One More Day – Diamond Rio
12. There is No Arizona – Jamie O’Neal
13. But For the Grace of God – Keith Urban
14. Tell Her – Lonestar
15. Ain’t Nothing ‘bout You – Brooks & Dunn
16. I Wanna Talk About Me – Toby Keith
17. Don’t Happen Twice – Kenny Chesney
18. Who I Am – Jessica Andrews
19. Austin – Blake Shelton
20. When I Think About Angels – Jamie O’Hara
21. I’m Already There – Lonestar

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Rachael Turner isn't terribly well-known but, like many of the singers we're featuring in this section as the entries get more and more recent (and less and less likely to have notable covers knocking around out there) she strives to keep herself searchable by sharing well-made cover videos of hit songs. She knocks Jamie O'Neal's "There Is No Arizona" out of the park in this stripped-down arrangement; on her YouTube channel, amidst covers of everything from Adele to Miranda Lambert to showtunes the still-youthful artist chronicles her battle with breast cancer with admirable courage and frankness. So here's hoping for her full recovery, longtime health, and maybe a nice career boost once she gets a chance to fully focus on that. 

 

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2000 - I hope you never lose your sense of wonder ...

Ah, you guys … a whole new millennium. Yes I know some will quibble that the new millennium actually starts with 2001, but that’s not how it feels, right? I guess it would’ve been more emotionally resonant to kick off 2000 with a new artist or at least a new song but nope, Faith Hill and “Breathe” carried over from the previous year, Y2K glitches be damned, and hung tough for the first five weeks of 2000. And why not? It’s a big crowd-pleasing but not-entirely-indistinct ballad from a glamorous bona fide star. Not much here for country purists, but Nashville was more or less done with those stiffs for now anyway. Let ‘em go catch nostalgia acts at the county fair or go watch BR5-49 in a skeevy bar somewhere if it bothers them that much. We’ve got money to make.

The Dixie Chicks and “Cowboy Take Me Away” were about as close as they were going to get to a sop for traditional fans for awhile. Some twangy harmonies, acoustic instrumentation, and even some rustic imagery right there in the title, although the structure’s more akin to a frothy Fleetwood Mac pop-rock hit than, say, Loretta Lynn. Tim McGraw never stopped being twangy either – I don’t think you could hide that particular light under a bushel – but the syrupy likes of “My Best Friend” drew more from Hallmark cards and the most squeezably soft easy listening than anything from the country pantheon. And dudes like Lonestar had no doubt about where their bread was buttered at this point, not even bothering to sound like anything other than a schmaltzy harmony-rich pop band on “Smile,” which I don’t remember at all and did not relish revisiting. I’m assuming its lone week at #1 was just reflected glory from “Amazed.”

The whole slick mess of it was just dying for a little blue-collar brashness. And Toby Keith didn’t seem at the time like an obvious choice to provide it – he’d served up his share of tepid country-pop by 2000 – but when emboldened to show a little personality he rattled off “How Do You Like Me Know?” The song’s central message might’ve been less than admirable – too many lines about celebrating an ex-flame’s misery just because she wasn’t into you in high school certainly sounds like a dick move – but at this point anything that raised a listener’s pulse seemed pretty invigorating. Sure, the “nyah nyah nyah” melody hook was childish, but stories for the masses about snobs getting their comeuppance are as old as time, and it’d been awhile since there was a Hank Jr. or Charlie Daniels in the chart mix with some ornery humor. Keith had had other at least humor-adjacent tunes in the past, but they didn’t hit as big as this one. If it wasn’t for this success, he either wouldn’t have been empowered to rattle some cages with his patriotic numbers shortly thereafter, or he would’ve perhaps tried but garnered little attention.

George Strait didn’t need to assert himself with image tweaks; at this point having a #1 hit had to be as routine as turning on a faucet, but he did sort of go out of his way to revisit one of his biggest recent triumphs: “The Best Day” was a sweet number about father-son bonding along the lines of “Love Without End, Amen.” If you don’t mind some wholesomeness with your country music, you could certainly do worse, and Strait was always better than most at reigning in the schmaltz. And lest Strait be the lone throwback still hanging in there on the country charts, ladies and gentlemen put your hands together for … Kenny Rogers? Rogers had been among the chart dominators in the ‘70s and early ‘80s but hadn’t been in on a #1 hit since the 1987 Ronnie Milsap duet “Make No Mistake (She’s Mine).” He’d never gone away; he wasn’t on the same tour circuits as the likes of Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard but he’d do theater gigs, Branson residencies etc. for his similarly-aging fans. I’m not sure what combo of industry nostalgia and promotional savvy got him back in the mix with “Buy Me a Rose”; the song’s just OK, and having Alison Krauss and Billy Dean listed as collaborators gave it a youthful nudge but it’s not like they were chart titans themselves. Still, to the top it went, and it was touted not only as a remarkable comeback but the first independent (non-major-label) release to hit #1 in over a decade. This probably would’ve made for a cooler story if it was some young upstart or iconoclastic left-field success as opposed to a legacy artist who’d already been to the dance numerous times … it’d be fun if we were writing about an Alison Krauss solo tune here, or something by Charlie Robison or Buddy Miller, but I guess we write about the chart we have, not the chart we want.

Faith Hill was as sure a bet as anyone now. “The Way You Love Me” was a catchy bit of country-pop froth, light on the country with some sort of auto-tune or vocoder or whatever prominent in the mix and a splashy video with Hill cavorting around in various foxy costumes, perhaps just because dressing up and showing off is fun sometimes but with the unspoken message that she was up for tweaking her music and image into whatever it needed to be to score another hit. It was still way better than “Yes!” by Chad Brock. Brock was a brawny former pro wrestler who’d turned some heads with the sincere regret of his previous top ten single “Ordinary Life.” “Yes!” was as shallow as that one was earnest, a cutesy bit of first-date storytelling with a brisk but weightless backing track; the wrestling equivalent would be a botched chair shot that showed too much light and sent the fans home no longer willing to suspend disbelief. He’d get nowhere near #1 again.

Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” was considerably more impactful, a five-week smash that crossed over to the all-genre Top 20. Texas native Womack had four singles fall just barely short of #1 at this point and, as mainstream country drifted more pop, was generally considered at least a bit of a twangy throwback. That didn’t apply here: “I Hope You Dance” was the sort of grandiose embroidered-throw-pillow philosophizing that folks like Faith Hill and Martina McBride were probably pissed they didn’t wind up with. It’s exactly the kind of wholesome anthem that makes sense for graduations, weddings, etc. but Womack’s vocal gifts keep it at least a little grounded, putting a beating heart in the crowd-pleasing machinery of it all. Surprisingly, this was her only #1 hit; she’d only have a couple more top tens over the years. But sort of like Dwight Yoakam, Patty Loveless, Marty Stuart and others, she’d drift into the Americana/roots music scene to play to her strengths.

Hard to imagine Lonestar rerouting into Americana, although you get the sense they’d give it a shot if they thought they could make a buck. “What About Now” sounds like the sort of watery, genreless upbeat stuff that got rounded up to mainstream country around the turn of the millenia; not much personality to it, this could’ve been cut by anybody to similar effect. Well, maybe not Alan Jackson … he was doubling down on the hard-country stuff, if anything, with an album called Under the Influence covering mostly decades-old country songs. I would’ve thought his version of “Pop a Top” was the big hit, seems that was the one that got the most play, but apparently his take on the Bob McDill/Don Williams chestnut “It Must Be Love” was the real prize. It’s not a landmark song or anything, just an affectionate trifle really, but in the context of the top of the 2000 country charts it was a godsend. There was always another weightless wonder like Jo Dee Messina’s “That’s the Way it Is” on the way, vaguely upbeat message songs and generic love songs with less heart than a motivational hashtag. That one got four weeks at #1 and feels like it was justifiably forgotten forever a month later.

Even in country’s darkest days, you can at least give it credit for not prematurely chucking its elders under the bus. Aaron Tippin had been on the chart for about a decade now, only occasionally visiting the top spot; his brawny twang and unvarnished blue-collar image were the sort of things mainstream Nashville probably liked to keep in the mix but not necessarily emphasize. His best bet was to go kind of brash and gimmicky like fellow tough guy Toby Keith, so “Kiss This” became his third and final #1. It ain’t great, but amidst the glossy crossover stuff it at least had some legit redneck punch to it. John Michael Montgomery had been around almost as long; he hadn’t tasted #1 for a half-decade but remained a top ten regular, more or less. And nothing gives you that extra little push over the top like heavy-handed emotional manipulation: “The Little Girl,” penned by the erstwhile Harley Allen, was a song adaptation of a Christian-themed urban legend that even the songwriter concedes he could never find verification of. It’s the tale of a child from a troubled godless home who witnessed her parents’ murder-suicide and, upon entering foster care, recognized a portrait of Jesus Christ as the man that comforted her through the awful incident. Imagine hearing a song about that in heavy rotation, plot twist long since spoiled for you … I’m no atheist, but this really seems like one of those “once is enough” propositions. Travis Tritt had been in the chart mix longer than either Tippin or Montgomery but he scored a final #1 hit with the sweet, modest, and well-crafted “Best of Intentions.” He’d tumble entirely out of the top ten soon enough, but unlike a lot of the 2000’s acts that nudged him out he’d managed to craft a distinct persona for himself, specifically that of an outlaw Southern-rock kind of dude who’d be in demand at biker rallies and patriotic events to the present day and, presumably, well beyond. Say what you will about his renegade posturing or online-politics jackassery, the man’s a real-deal talent who always gave at least as good as he got.        

The remainder of the year just sort of clunked along with some relative newbies. Phil Vassar had been named Country Songwriter of the Year by publishing giant ASCAP the previous year, notching cuts with stars like Tim McGraw and Jo Dee Messina, and given the chance to run with the ball himself pooped out “Just Another Day in Paradise,” one of those gratingly wholesome and cutesy numbers about domestic suburban living that were just gonna get more prevalent as the decade trudged on. Brad Paisley continued his less-grating but similarly-wholesome streak with “We Danced,” a nice enough love song considering the narrative’s set in motion by some nightclub employee refusing to give a tipsy beauty her purse back unless she dances with him (and now they’re married, in case you wanna skip ahead). The aforementioned Vassar sort of closed out the year too, as the pen behind the Tim McGraw hit “My Next Thirty Years.” An ok-at-best slab of suburban midlife philosophizing, it’s about as emblematic of the genre moment as one can get, scoffing at one’s own youthful indiscretions and pledging to settle down into a peaceful, productive and loving adulthood. More than ever, it felt like mainstream country music was treating its whole history of songs of struggle, heartbreak, moral anxiety and the more-than-occasional bout of boozy mayhem as a misspent youth to be compartmentalized and left behind for slicker yet more wholesome pastures. That’s a worthwhile thing to do with your life. But to me, that’s a tragic thing to do to a genre.

THE TREND?

Unsettling, really. Trotting out a heavily-facelifted Kenny Rogers (that must’ve been one helluva beard for a surgeon to have to maneuver around) was emblematic of a genre that wanted to benefit from its history but pretend a lot of years never happened. The sticky-sweet air of cloying suburban wholesomeness just hung over the chart like a fog, little lines of Ned Flanders-ish philosophy best left to Hallmark cards or embroidered throw pillows coming at you relentlessly every time you chose a country station as your sonic backdrop for the day. The closest they could get to anything resembling a spark kind of veered towards clunky rudeness (“Kiss This,” “How Do You Like Me Now?”) but no sense of danger or adventure. Aside from the occasional Alan Jackson throwback, the best you could hope for was that the glossy pop ballads might at least be well-crafted and delivered with some passion (“Breathe,” “Cowboy Take Me Away,” “I Hope You Dance” et al). I turned 24 in 2000 and was not digging this stuff anymore. 23 years later, as a more or less wholesome suburbanite myself, I still haven’t grown into whatever the appeal of this stuff must have been.

THE RANKING:

1. Breathe – Faith Hill
2. Best of Intentions – Travis Tritt
3. The Best Day – George Strait
4. I Hope You Dance – Lee Ann Womack w/Sons of the Desert
5. It Must Be Love – Alan Jackson
6. Cowboy Take Me Away – The Dixie Chicks
7. How Do You Like Me Now? – Toby Keith
8. Kiss This – Aaron Tippin
9. My Next Thirty Years – Tim McGraw
10. The Way You Love Me – Faith Hill
11. Buy Me a Rose – Kenny Rogers (w/Alison Krauss & Billy Dean)
12. We Danced – Brad Paisley
13. What About Now - Lonestar
14. My Best Friend – Tim McGraw
15. That’s the Way – Jo Dee Messina
16. The Little Girl – John Michael Montgomery
17. Yes! – Chad Brock
18. Smile – Lonestar
19. Just Another Day in Paradise – Phil Vassar

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Despite his prowess as a vocalist and live act, for years Nashville seemed to think Chris Stapleton was better off as a behind-the-scenes songwriter, crafting tracks for less-distinct but theoretically more marketable singers while only getting to flex his vocal muscles with the fairly obscure bands The Jompson Brothers and The Steeldrivers. Sure, he could shred on guitar, write indelible hooks, and sing like Gregg Allman crossed with Otis Redding, but he was also a heavy hairy dude in a business that increasingly favored gym rats with just enough calibrated scruff to not come off like Ken dolls. 

But once the business actually cracked the door open for Stapleton as a solo artist circa 2015, he largely kicked down the walls of the Americana-niche box and even kind of transcended country music in general, becoming one of the most beloved singer-songwriters of his day and a regular on country radio, industry awards nominations (and wins), festival headliner slots and the upper reaches of the album sales charts (which ain't what they used to be, but still). Better late than never, right? Anyhow, here's him finding a different dimension of Lee Ann Womack's big 2000 hit "I Hope You Dance," stripping away the gloss and getting to the heart of it. Stapleton hit Nashville about a year after the original hit #1 and, even though it took him awhile, has probably changed the business as much as almost anyone since. 

1999 - keep 'em close by don't you let 'em fade away ...

“You’re Easy on the Eyes” by Terri Clark carried over for a couple more weeks as the last year of the millennium geared up, all full of Y2K anxiety and the occasional doomsday prophecy. It was nice to have a relatable upbeat chugger on top. Perennial good ol’ boy Alan Jackson swung in after a ’98 absence with “Right On the Money,” no great shakes but a charming little shuffle made a nice counterpoint on a chart that was leaning towards the overblown. Martina McBride went all big and ballad-y on “Wrong Again,” never sorry to hear that beautiful voice, we could all use a torchy heartfelt number here and there right? Jo Dee Messina was relatively restrained on “Stand Beside Me” but it’s got a torchy vibe about it too, offset with some nice lyrical detail and a general sense of subtlety country-pop ballads sometimes forget.

Mark Chesnutt seemed prime for getting lost in the shuffle; his trad-country approach was starting to seem kind of anachronistic by the end of the decade he’d broke through in, and he was kind of getting the B-list treatment, so I can certainly see why he’d cut a version of “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” The hit from a couple years prior by aging rock & roll superstars Aerosmith was also derided as a cynically off-brand cash-in, a composition by insanely successful mercenary pop songwriter Diane Warren as a tie-in with the space-action blockbuster movie Armageddon. The Aerosmith version and the movie were so huge that even if you near-strictly listened to what passed for country music in the late ‘90s, you’d heard it somehow. The uber-twangy Chesnutt seemed like one of the odder choices around to land the assignment of making it cross over to country; I know the common consensus is that his version lands somewhere between ill-advised and sucks, but I don’t know … it’s not that bad in my book. Not one of my favorite Chesnutt songs, but probably one of my favorite ’99 #1 songs at least by default.

Sara Evans’ “No Place That Far” was even better, buoyed by prominent Vince Gill backing vocals, a breakthrough for an artist whose initial releases leaned vaguely towards more of an alt-country or at least more-traditional direction. She didn’t go full Shania or anything, but it was reasonable to assume that a good-looking brunette with a big flexible voice could attract more conventional chart success, and she certainly did. She wasn’t an era-dominating superstar or anything, but we’ll be talking about her more if the prevailing 00’s country stank doesn’t run us off. “You Were Mine” by the [redacted] Chicks pulled off a similar feat; self-penned by the band, it split the difference between a big pop-ballad hook and a down-to-earth, twangy-harmonied country heartbreak number. So far so good, more or less, but man these songs are slow …

You wish they’d pick up the tempo but then you’re reminded to be careful what you wish for. Kenny Chesney came roaring back in with “How Forever Feels.” Pretty damn mild as far as roars and/or uptempo songs go … Chesney’s first couple hits suggested a singer more along the lines of Tracy Lawrence or something, another vaguely traditional twangy dude swept up in the machine. But this one was largely twang-free and sort of genre-free, just some bland lines reminding listeners of other things they liked like NASCAR and Jimmy Buffett (Chesney would lean seriously hard on that second one eventually) and wrapping it up with a wholesome love message. Like it or not, this was going to be a seriously prevalent approach in the years to come; this song topped the charts for a staggering six weeks and Chesney would soon be one of the genre’s few stadium-level live draws. Copycat bullshit was inevitable.

Mark Wills probably seemed like someone who’d be neck-and-neck with Chesney, another kinda-bland dude who seemed like he was up for singing whatever the label shoved in front of him. “Wish You Were Here” was sort of interesting, just a sappy little ballad if you’re not paying attention to the lyrics, but upon closer listen there’s a twist akin to a more wholesome Twilight Zone episode. Wills would have other hits but unlike Chesney or Toby Keith or other longer-term heavyweights, he just never quite formulated a persona. I can’t swear that Tim McGraw did either, although he certainly seems like a nice man; then again, being in a high-profile marriage to a hot superstar is probably enough of a hook. He also showed a tasteful streak that emerges from time to time by covering Rodney Crowell’s “Please Remember Me.” Crowell’s own days as a #1 record singer were about a decade past at this point, so he’d been free to go out on highly-personal artistic limbs but his more straightforward numbers still had hit potential in properly-marketed hands.

George Strait was nearly two decades deep in top-drawer country stardom by this point, and “Write This Down” was good for a four-week run at #1. It was still rarer for him not to hit the top at this point, and everything about “Write This Down” was refreshing in context. Big hearty uptempo beat, declaration of full-grown love from someone who sounds like he means it, unmistakably country production without too many bells and whistles … sure, he’s had better, but someone needed to show these genreless pups how this shit was done. Or so says me, anyhow …

I guess the big money was still in crossover. Lonestar was about as anonymous as a band gets; even the name sounds like something a hack writer would name the country band in a book or movie made by people who don’t like country music. They’d had a couple of hits but no signature sound or visual hook, it could’ve just been the dudes from Little Texas after haircuts and a repackage for all anyone cared. But I guess the world was just waiting for “Amazed.” Apparently the platinum R&B group Boyz II Men turned it down at some point, but Lonestar was more amenable. It sounds like every big-production love ballad you’ve ever heard, but obviously there’s big business in that, because people ate this the hell up. It was the longest-running #1 hit of the Nielsen era (a crown it’d only briefly hold, but still) at eight weeks, a massive crossover #1 pop hit with a dance remix and everything (kind of surprising they didn’t just have an actual pop act recut it … lead singer Richie McDonald does have a recognizable twang). I don’t actively hate it or anything, but I sure was tired of it in the moment and was surprised at how few people felt similarly. I’d take either version of “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” over this.

Then you end up with something like Chely Wright her first and only #1, “Single White Female,” just one of those things where it sounds like someone uttered a common phrase and some yokel yelled “hey you should write a song about that!” and the other person called him on his bullshit and sat down and wrote something that wasn’t all that good but accomplished the modest mission at hand. Wright had numerous singles before and after this one but nothing else cracked the top ten; she’s mostly known for some more-recent publicity over coming out as gay after a presumably long stint in the closet. Kenny Chesney followed suit (song-wise, anyway) with the similarly hackneyed “You Had Me at Hello,” in this case clearly capitalizing on the then-recent hit movie Jerry Maguire and the familiar quote from its big romantic climax. This was not proving to be a good year for the craft of Nashville songwriting.

Tim McGraw’s “Something Like That” was another example of something that, by all rights, a country music fan would be embarrassed to be caught listening to by his non-fan friends. Five weeks at #1 for an almost cartoonishly twangy song about hooking up with some miniskirt chick at the county fair with a barbecue stain on your t-shirt, and that’s all just in the chorus. Then you get Martina McBride with “I Love You,” which in its simplicity is either a bold or lazy thing to call the new song you’re writing. As country-pop trifles go, it’s not bad enough to bitch about, better than the last few we mentioned anyway. It scored another five weeks at #1.

Clint Black always had it in him to class the place up; his twangy tenor wasn’t for everyone I guess, but it was for enough people that he was going on a decade as a bona fide star. But the perception that he’d “gone Hollywood” and lost his early-career juice was probably not helped by bringing his wife aboard for a duet; nothing wrong with Lisa Hartman Black’s voice, but “When I Said I Do” was as watery and saccharine as most of the other chart offenders of the era and Black’s more-ambitious approach to songwriting couldn’t save it. Plus folks already had McGraw and Hill if they wanted a good-looking country music power couple.

Meanwhile, if you wanted something down to earth, Brad Paisley had arrived. Now mostly known for popping up in insurance commercials with Payton Manning, for a few years there he seemed like the great hope for fans who were concerned we were one George Strait retirement away from the whole damn scene getting sucked up in a glittery cloud of Nashvegas gloss. Paisley was a clean cut young guy with a simple mid-range twang who looked very much at home in a cowboy hat; I don’t think the modest domestic storytelling of “He Didn’t Have to Be” – a low-key shoutout to all the non-lousy stepdads of the world – made it overly obvious that Paisley would be one of the artists pretty much running the joint over the next decade and change, but it was nice on its own terms. Usually that wholesome suburbanite dad-country isn’t my thing, and despite being apparently a remarkable dude Paisley’s never quite been my jam. But it was a rough year, pretty loud and saccharine, I’ll take what I can get. Faith Hill’s mega-ballad “Breathe” was the final #1 of the year but most of its run was in 2000, so we’ll handle it as soon as we bring ourselves to tackle the next decade.      

THE TREND?

For starters, at least two-thirds of this remarkably short list of #1s for the year are what we’d call ballads. That’s not an indictment in itself, it just makes for a pretty dreary year when it’s all said and done. Since there weren’t 50 or so songs to cover I checked out longer lists of what the year’s biggest hits were outside of the obvious #1s and yeah, most of those were in the same vein. The transition of country music into suburban easy listening for southern/heartland white folks – women, mostly – with only the slightest nods to genre tradition seems near-complete at this point and peeking ahead a little to the next few years is wildly unencouraging. Yeah, there’s some gold to be found (or at least some decently-polished bronze) in all the downbeat emoting. And affectionate and/or heartsick ballads, not to mention nods to contemporary pop, are as old as the country Billboard chart itself. But it seems like at the turn of the millenia, the industry had run out of folks with the taste to say how much was too much.  

THE RANKING

1. You Were Mine – The Dixie Chicks
2. Wrong Again – Martina McBride
3. No Place That Far – Sara Evans
4. Write This Down – George Strait
5. Please Remember Me – Tim McGraw
6. Stand Beside Me – Jo Dee Messina
7. Right On the Money – Alan Jackson
8. Breathe – Faith Hill
9. I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing – Mark Chesnutt
10. He Didn’t Have to Be – Brad Paisley
11. When I Said I Do – Clint Black with Lisa Hartman Black
12. I Love You – Martina McBride
13. Something Like That – Tim McGraw
14. Single White Female – Chely Wright
15. Amazed – Lonestar
16. You Had Me at Hello – Kenny Chesney
17. How Forever Feels – Kenny Chesney
18. Wish You Were Here - Mark Wills

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Texas singer-songwriter Dave Fenley was always vocally a cut above the average Lone Star bar-band dudes, blessed with a barrel-chested gale of a voice full of empathy-laced grit. Understandably not content to just swim through the logjam of likeminded dudes who sprung up across Texas in the wake of Robert Earl Keen and Pat Green, he made some inroads with Nashville, Hollywood (you might've seen him bantering with Howard Stern on America's Got Talent), Washington DC (he sang at the televised Republican National Convention a few years back) and continues to gamely keep his name and talents out there online and in person with various gigs. His voice remains more than able to cut through the country-pop cheese and find the emotional heart of songs with more stripped-down arrangments like, for example, his rendition of Lonestar's "Amazed." I like it way better in this setting.

1998 - many precede and many will follow ...

Most of the 1997 entry was spent griping, snarking, etc. I’d like to not do too much of that, if it gets that bad again maybe we should just wrap it up and say “hey this is about country music #1s up to 2000” and call it a day. I mean, things aren’t that bad … Garth Brooks’ swinging “Longneck Bottle” bridges us in from ’97, followed by Martina McBride’s powerhouse ballad “A Broken Wing.” It’s emotionally resonant, smartly produced, McBride sings it to the heavens but makes it feel earned instead of overindulgent. And then Tim McGraw, who’s kind of hit-and-miss with me as an artist, notched one of his best ones with “Just to See You Smile.” A tumbling, chugging, unmistakably country tune despite the big-budget production, it hits the narrative notes of a put-upon dude who did his damnedest but still didn’t get the girl. Those guys are in the audience and always will be; acknowledging the sadder side of devotion is about as traditional-country as it gets, no matter who’s singing it. Six weeks at #1.

As machine-y as the industry was, there was still room for a little anomaly now and then. Midwestern singer-songwriter Anita Cochran had never had anything close to a top ten hit and never would again; her duet partner, ‘80s holdover Steve Wariner, hadn’t had one in almost a decade (although he did maintain more of a chart presence than pretty much any other ‘80s holdover not named George or Reba). But when they joined forces on “What if I Said” it blew straight to the top; the song’s just OK, I’m not sure why it ended up being the first duet to top the charts in a few years, but it’s nice to see the deluge of ‘90s country bubbled a few less-expected names to the top. George Strait, meanwhile, continued to at least co-rule the roost without breaking a sweat on offhandedly charming movers like “Round About Way.”

Clint Black was still hanging in there, prominent in the mix for longer than I remembered, even if the material wasn’t as hard-hitting as his first few career triumphs (not like that’s unusual in any genre). “Nothin’ but the Taillights” sounded like a million bucks, meaty guitar licks and rich harmonies pushing a punchy uptempo narrative; just an OK song, but a great record, if that makes sense. Trisha Yearwood’s “Perfect Love” had some kick to it too, plus a relatable counterpoint against the sappy devotional ballads that had littered the country-pop landscape for decades. Jo Dee Messina, a big-voiced redhead from the country music hotbed of [checks notes] Massachusetts had been knocking around the top ten for a year or two but scored her first #1 with the breezy kiss-off “Bye, Bye.” She’d had better songs before and would have more after. Overall it was nice to see more females in the mix as the ‘90s wore on; Shania Twain was the most obvious beneficiary, and stuff like “You’re Still the One” pushed all the right buttons. A sonic soap opera, all breathy devotion and swoony background vocals, it only sat atop the country charts for a week but topped the Adult Contemporary charts for eight and got as high as #2 on the all-genre Hot 100. It was her biggest crossover to date, and a clear sign that the whole “make THEM come to US” approach of the early-‘90s country boom was no more.

Speaking of, here’s Garth Brooks with “Two Pina Coladas,” a frothy bit of tropical country-pop in the obvious vein of Jimmy Buffett (apparently Buffett joked at the time about suing, as if he’d trademarked the entire idea of singing about beaches or closely-associated drinks). It was a fun singalong and not much more, but something you could actually see putting on at a party unlike most of the other #1 hits of the day. Faith Hill’s “This Kiss,” for example. It’s a sonic equivalent to a cheesy romcom movie or cheap romance paperback, a sweet little something for the ladies by the ladies, put together to push all the right buttons for a big enough slice of the audience to win the day for awhile. I’m clearly not the target audience for this sort of thing, so I guess I can’t gripe about them missing me with it.

George Strait still retained a big chunk of “for the ladies” appeal but always managed to keep the guys on board too, the relatable buddy who could shoot the shit with the boys but then turn on the charm for the women. “I Just Want to Dance With You” is sweet, low-key clever, and slightly retro, plus it has the distinction of being one of the small handful of mainstream hits written (or at least co-written) by my songwriting idol John Prine. Usually Prine’s highly distinctive sense of poetry and humor didn’t lend itself well to across-the-board hit records; it’s hard to imagine an Alan Jackson or Tim McGraw storming the charts with something like “Illegal Smile” or “Sam Stone,” but it’s nice to recall that the late Prine made enough mailbox money here and there to pursue his more singular visions on his own records. In a way it’s too bad that Nashville didn’t figure out how to weave guys like Prine and Guy Clark as prominently into the mix as they did similar talents like Tom T. Hall and Kris Kristofferson, but at least they were in there somewhere.

Reba McEntire continued to be sort of the female George Strait, building a legacy in an industry that increasingly seemed to not want people to do that. She joined forces with Brooks & Dunn (or really just Dunn, as far as I can tell, despite the credits) for “If You See Him/If You See Her,” one of those warmly melancholy, nicely symmetrical female-male duets where it turns out they were perfect for each other all along. If anyone was thinking Ronnie Dunn might be a bit underrated as a vocal powerhouse, holding his own with Reba was a step in the right direction. Clint Black sounded pretty warm and cozy himself on “The Shoes You’re Wearing,” which continued in the folk-rock vein he’d seemingly come to prefer, notably countrified anyway by the unsmotherable twang in his voice; it might’ve been his best hit of the era.

Since we haven’t talked about Collin Raye for awhile, it’d be reasonable to assume he’d been churned back out of the charts like a lot of dudes who made that early-‘90s splash, but nah. He’d been a top ten regular, pretty damn generic but durable. Mostly with big somber ballads, but “I Can Still Feel You” had a nice little spark and jangle to it, which the Raye catalog could always use. Garth Brooks made one of his occasional chart-topping visits from the multiplatinum stratosphere with a cover of Bob Dylan’s relatively recent “To Make You Feel My Love.” If you’re wondering when exactly the crowd-pleasing Brooks became a Dylan acolyte, it was probably around the time Billy Joel – a much more obvious influence – covered the song on one of his albums a couple years prior. So he was covering Billy Joel covering Bob Dylan, and a decade later pop superstar-in-the-making Adele would (I guess) cover all of them. Anyway, it’s a sweet tune, low-key and mature, much simpler than the standard Dylan tunes full of allegory, wild imagery, obscure references etc. Not a bad fit for the charts of the day, although I’m not sure if anyone less superstarry than Garth could’ve pulled it off.

The Dixie Chicks came swingin’ out of Texas with their debut album Wide Open Spaces and struck gold with their second single, the prophetically titled “There’s Your Trouble.” Ah man … where to begin? For one, “debut” should have an asterisk, because there were three albums over more than a half-decade of the Dixie Chicks being sort of a niche all-girl band leaning on old-time bluegrass and cowboy music, before half the band split and got replaced with lead singer Natalie Maines. Also, if you’re looking online for their music, be advised they go by just “The Chicks” now because “Dixie” is a Confederacy reference that can upset people, especially if they have leftist sensitivities. And might as well keep them happy, since that’s about the only people that still openly support the Chicks, because in 2003 Maines made some mild derogatory statements onstage in London about then-President George W. Bush and America’s controversial invasion of Iraq. To be clear, Bush himself didn’t throw a public tantrum, unlike some more-recent presidents we could mention. Partly because some pushback from home and abroad was expected, partially because he was a functioning adult, and partially because the burgeoning right-wing media types on radio, TV, internet etc. threw a big enough one that he couldn’t have gotten a word in edgewise anyway. Honestly if this had happened in any other genre of music (and it did, to some extent) it would not have been big news, but country music’s audience – not to mention a big chunk of its artists and behind-the-scenes types – has always leaned at least a little to the right. 24 hour news cycles, hard-right radio shows, and casual internet usage were all much more in the mix than they would’ve been even a half-decade prior, so the pump was primed for the sort of easily-triggered widespread outrage that has come to epitomize modern life. And that’s a much more depressing and aggravating trend than anything that’s happened to the country billboard charts.

“There’s Your Trouble” is a pretty good song, nothing huge, they’d have better ones but the foot was definitely in the door. Nary a hint of any future cultural-lightning-rod stuff, but might as well lay it out now because unlike, say, Toby Keith, once they get to that point there’s really no more country chart action to talk about. The Chicks were swiftly excommunicated from country radio and industry events, angry dorks issued anonymous death threats or staged demonstrations where they burned or bulldozed piles of (presumably already purchased) CDs, various cultural pundits either overpraised their bravery or disproportionately condemned them … it was a big ugly thing. A few years down the line badmouthing the Bush family and questioning the Iraq invasion was a pretty common thing for Trump-era conservatives to do, but I don’t recall anyone retroactively apologizing for making such a stink. Self-aware apologies are rarer nowadays than Dixie Chicks radio hits.

I am cheerfully unaware of Jo Dee Messina’s political stances, but when she sings “I’m Alright” I take her word for it. It was catchy, clever, breezy, exactly the sort of thing that was working in the moment. Brooks & Dunn busted out “How Long Gone,” riding that nice heartland rock pulse they were always great at laying twangy steel guitars atop. Tim McGraw continued to be as much a lock as anyone to top the charts, and “Where the Green Grass Grows” sort of reflected country’s cultural moment in its lyrics: yeah, we’re mostly a bunch of highly modernized consumerist suburbanites, but really we wanna be wholesomely simple country folks. We can’t do that because we gotta get to work, and honestly if we tried to pull it off we’d probably either be bored or in way over our heads, but hey we can listen to songs about it. It's a nice thought. For a genre largely rooted in its relatability and realism, there’s always been a touch of escapist fantasy in country music, a pocket of songs that can make us feel for a moment like we’re cowboys, outlaws, drifters, or just hardy self-sufficient rural folks in an age when that way of life is such a small slice of America.

Then there’s stuff like Shania Twain’s “Honey I’m Home,” which sort of sounded like a copy of Mindy McCready copying “Any Man of Mine.” Just a bit of overdone sass destined to eventually be rediscovered by drag queens or country-girl wannabes on TikTok. The Dixie Chicks continued their ill-fated roll with the lovely, relatable “Wide Open Spaces.” A cover of a then-recent tune by sunny, obscure Texas folk-rockers The Groobees (including songwriter Susan Gibson), it was a nice nod to the Chicks’ Lone Star roots but also perfectly geared for both the optimistic young females and anxious soon-to-be-empty-nesters in the audience. The Chicks’ Texas connections are worth mentioning because the regional country scene in Texas – much of which was framed as a reaction to the encroaching blandness in Nashville – was bubbling up into something fairly big, where the top acts could rival most of the Nashville stars as live draws, and largely replaced contemporary Nashville as a favorite of college-aged males across Texas, Oklahoma, and scattered other enclaves in particular. Natalie Maines’ dad Lloyd Maines, a veteran multi-instrumentalist and producer, was a key figure in producing and playing on many of those independently-produced albums by the likes of Robert Earl Keen, Pat Green, Roger Creager etc. Natalie’s bandmate Emily Erwin became Emily Robison upon marrying Charlie Robison, one of the offshoot genre’s leading lights; Maines herself was married to the aforementioned Green’s bassist at around the time of their breakthrough. The “Texas Country” subgenre was neither the threat to Nashville nor impending takeover of it that its fans might have hoped, but it's fair to point out that the contemporary country of the day was getting to a point that younger audiences in particular were looking for alternatives.

Maybe my then-as-now interest in such alternatives is part of the reason I didn’t remember Ty Herndon’s third and final hit, “It Must Be Love.” Not to be confused with the old Don Williams hit revitalized by Alan Jackson, this IMBL is just another upbeat NG/AG trifle, countrified ever-so-slightly by some steel guitar bite. It’s fine, just another bit of evidence that Herndon’s approach was as indistinct and safe as his personal life was unique and messy. The dude had some stuff to draw from, he just chose not to … not hard to understand why, just seems like a missed opportunity. Faith Hill’s personal life actually added to her appeal; her and McGraw hooking up and having kids and tying the knot added up to a glamorous if slightly-out-of-order fairy tale for the suburban country fan masses, and solid material like “Let Me Let Go” kept her famous for her talents as well as her backstory.

Brooks & Dunn slowed things down for an unexpected cover of Roger Miller’s “Husbands and Wives.” By the late-‘90s, folks who had only a superficial memory of Roger Miller might’ve had him pigeonholed as a comedy/novelty act of sorts, with the (admittedly sublime) likes of “Dang Me” or “Chug-a-Lug” taking precedence and filing him alongside the witless likes of Ray Stevens. But he could also shape his wordplay gifts into something deeper and more melancholy, and this one’s a prime example. So retroactive thanks to whoever was in on the decision to revive that aspect of already-late-by-then Miller’s talents with Dunn’s endlessly warm twang; I kind of love that, no matter what blandness might’ve been encroaching in the late ‘90s, ’98 was still a year in which John Prine, Bob Dylan, and Roger Miller all wrote #1 country hits whether they meant to or not.

Terri Clark, a beautiful vaguely tomboy-ish Canadian gal in a cowgirl hat, had been in and out of the top ten for a few years by ’98 and finally scored her first #1 with “You’re Easy on the Eyes,” a bit of well-crafted kiss-off with a relatable punchline (“… but hard on the heart”). Late-‘90s country was easy on the ears but, more often than not, hard on the hearts of fans who’d hoped the “New Traditionalist” approach that dominated the turn of the last decade was going to stick around longer than it did.    

THE TREND?

Song by song, ’98 feels slightly better than ’97. Not that there’s any obvious course-correction, just a sense that leading lights like Strait, Brooks & Dunn, Black etc. have got a handle on this stuff (no Alan Jackson this year, oddly) and that if new faces like the Dixie Chicks, Martina McBride etc. aren’t exactly country purists then at least they’ve got some spark to them that may well grow on you if you’re not instantly entranced. Then again, if you think Shania, Faith and Tim don’t sound as good as they look, all indications are that you’re in for a difficult era here as a listener. It’s an odd counterpoint to the history of popular rock music, in which every few years a brash new gang of youngsters come along doing something different that pushes the previous generation of fans a little further away; it seems like periodically, mainstream country music doubles down on the older crowd with a prevalence of white-bread easy-listening crossover. And the ho-hum nature of some of the stuff that rose to the top in this era certainly started raising a question, in an era where call-in requests to radio stations and purchase of record singles no longer really factored in: does radio play this stuff because people like it so much? Or do people like this stuff because radio plays it so much?          

THE RANKING

1. A Broken Wing – Martina McBride
2. Wide Open Spaces – The Dixie Chicks
3. Round About Way – George Strait
4. I Just Want to Dance With You – George Strait
5. Just to See You Smile – Tim McGraw
6. Husbands & Wives – Brooks & Dunn
7. The Shoes You’re Wearing – Clint Black
8. How Long Gone – Brooks & Dunn
9. Two Pina Coladas – Garth Brooks
10. Let Me Let Go – Faith Hill
11. If You See Him/If You See Her – Reba McEntire/Brooks & Dunn
12. Nothin’ but the Taillights – Clint Black
13. This Kiss – Faith Hill
14. To Make You Feel My Love – Garth Brooks
15. I’m Alright – Jo Dee Messina
16. Where the Green Grass Grows – Tim McGraw
17. You’re Still the One – Shania Twain
18. You’re Easy on the Eyes – Terri Clark
19. There’s Your Trouble – The Dixie Chicks
20. Perfect Love – Trisha Yearwood
21. Bye, Bye – Jo Dee Messina
22. I Can Still Feel You – Collin Raye
23. What If I Said – Anita Cochran with Steve Wariner
24. It Must Be Love – Ty Herndon
25. Honey, I’m Home – Shania Twain

DOWN THE ROAD ...

As mentioned, the Dixie Chicks' early hit "Wide Open Spaces" was written by Texas-based performing songwriter Susan Gibson and originally recorded by The Groobees, an obscure but pretty wonderful band she co-fronted with fellow songwriter Scott Melott. I don't know how many people were calling it "Americana" yet in the early '90s, but their smart and earthy blend of folk, rock and country pretty much defines it. 

The band didn't last all that long beyond the success of the Chicks' version of what was suddenly their best-known tune, and given their independent nature nobody was really tasked with making sure their (highly recommended) albums stayed in print. It was in Gibson's best interest to have her biggest composition recorded under her own name as her solo career moved along, so she did so on both 2005's OuterSpace and the 2014 live album The Second Hand. For the uninitiated, there's a whole extra verse there, and even if there wasn't then Gibson's empathetic, impassioned voice is reason enough to hear it straight from the originator even if it was recorded and released after the fact. Gibson still gigs, mostly around Texas, and the band gets together for a reunion show or recording once in awhile so there's still time to get on board.