1997 - everything I own don't fill up half ...

Sooner or later this is probably going to turn into something I don’t look forward to. There’s a difference between rediscovering some golden nugget from the ‘60s or ‘70s and having to relisten to something I intentionally ignored in the first place. In 1997 we’re hitting the point that I wasn’t buying mainstream country tapes or CDs anymore, or listening to it all that much. Most of these songs were big enough that I still absorbed them at some point anyhow, but these were my college years and mainstream country was kind of alienating me, dude. I was in a college town in Texas so I had options. You could catch up on Robert Earl Keen or Billy Joe Shaver, or get into younger troubadours like Jack Ingram or Roger Creager or whatever. Or hell, go down to the local bar and see them live for relatively cheap! Good times.

Meanwhile, some jacked bald dude named Kevin Sharp drops out of nowhere and gets a four-week run at #1 with “Nobody Knows,” a cover of a very recent pop hit by the Tony Rich Project. It’s not bad, and once you hear Sharp was bald because he was a childhood cancer survivor it’s hard not to sympathize. But it’s not what you tuned into country radio for, right? Mark Chesnutt was still country as all get-out, with stuff like the fiddle-blazin’ “It’s a Little Too Late.” Much better, but we’d kind of been-there-done-that at this point. Same with Brooks & Dunn and “A Man This Lonely” … Dunn’s voice remains a twangy wonder, but they weren’t so much building on the promise of stuff like “Neon Moon” and “Brand New Man” as they were just sort of giving it a new coat of paint every year or so. Then you get a relatively new dude like Rick Trevino – kind of nice to see a Hispanic guy there, that hadn’t happened in a while – and songs like “Running Out of Reasons to Run” that are pleasant but don’t have a ton of spark. By this time maybe you’ve also heard some adventurous alt-country stuff like Old 97s, or Son Volt or Gillian Welch or something, and the big-timers just aren’t sparking you the same.

It just gets a little ho-hum, with Toby Keith sleepwalking through a apologetic number about emotionally unavailable dudes called “Me Too” and Deana Carter trying to liven things up with a sweet little tune called “We Danced Anyway” that sounds like your sister would probably like it but a couple of listens is good enough for you. Reba McEntire’s longevity is really freakin’ impressive by this point, and that big voice is intact but “How Was I to Know” doesn’t bring much new to the table. When you do get a new voice it’s often something like Trace Adkins, a huge slab of downhome dude with an impressive baritone who’s capable of knocking real-deal songs out of the park but often settles for stuff like “(This Ain’t) No Thinkin’ Thing” where the title accidentally describes the state of the genre. Or maybe they were overthinking it. Something wasn’t clicking. Clay Walker clunks out some cutesy little ditty like “Rumor Has It” and makes it clear that a few years of stardom hasn’t evolved or empowered him one damn bit. Either that or he thinks songs like that are great, which is somehow worse.

The powers that be are hopefully glad that they didn’t put George Strait out to pasture too soon; “One Night at a Time” might not crack anyone’s 20 favorite George Strait songs, but it sounds like Hank Williams crossed with Albert Einstein next to some of the other stuff surrounding it, and it’s good for a full five weeks on top of the chart. Bryan White, of all people, nudges him aside for a week with a peppy bit of fluff called “Sittin’ On Go” but at least that experiment’s winding down … that’ll be it for ol’ B-Dub in the #1 spot and pretty much the chart in general. Back to the grownups, with the now-married Tim McGraw and Faith Hill joining forces on record as well for “It’s Your Love.” And yeah, it’s kind of overdone and sappy, but they sound sincere enough and Faith just gets more gorgeous all the time. It’s not like marrying a fellow superstar made her measurably less accessible to you. It’s fine, just be happy for them. And hey here’s George again already with “Carrying Your Love With Me,” and that one’s even better! In this context, it might just be the best damn song of the year so far. Things are really looking up.

Well, ok, Lonestar and “Come Cryin’ to Me” are just kind of fine … doesn’t hurt your ears, but doesn’t really stick to your ribs either. At least they’ll never do some overblown crossover pop ballad, probably. And this new Kenny Chesney dude, with the earnest country kick of “She’s Got it All”? He’s been plugging away a few years now, good for him. I bet he gets even more hardcore country if you give it a little time. Maybe he should take a little vacation at the beach and then get back to business. He’s earned it. Maybe soon enough he’ll have the effortless charm of Alan Jackson, gifting us with cool little laid-back tunes like “There Goes” in between sad hardcore country songs. Someone’s gotta fill those shoes. Yeah Jackson’s probably at least four shoe sizes bigger than Chesney, but stuff some tissue in the toes, it’ll be fine. He is gonna keep wearing shoes, right?

Diamond Rio had never gone away, they’d just eased down the chart a bit, alternating between sincere and often-touching balladry and upbeat gimmicky stuff. But they managed to march back up top with “How Your Love Makes Me Feel,” which leans more towards the latter but was enough to stay there for three solid weeks. Deana Carter stuck around with the similarly breezy “How Do I Get There,” her character-rich voice getting more out of the song than it seemed to give her. Tim McGraw continued to weigh in as one of the new chart heavyweights, for better or worse; “Everywhere” was mostly for the better, a well-crafted travelog of a song, some emotional heft without overdoing it. Shania Twain continued to fire on all cylinders: her upbeat stuff tends to kind of run together for me, but it was all working for her: “Love Gets Me Every Time” was more or less the same as the previous year’s “You Win My Love” and was at least as big of a hit, holding down the #1 spot for five full weeks as November eased into December. Total empty calories, but sometimes you just need a snack.

Michael Peterson was pretty run-of-the-mill, and it was indeed seeming like a mill at this point, where aside from a few charismatic bright spots most artists were only as big as their next song. He was one of those guys you’d see on the country music video channels but rarely heard on the Top 40, but “From Here to Eternity” was exactly the sort of generic love ballad radio wanted. The year closed out with Garth Brooks, still easily the biggest live draw in the business and en route to becoming the best-selling solo male artist of all time in any genre. “Longneck Bottle” is a brisk little country-swing jam, engaging enough and resembling traditional country, not at all indicative of his international superstar status. By now he was a bit like a CEO who swings by the regional office a couple times a year to have coffee with the middle management, shake a few hands and get back on the private jet before the whole common-touch thing goes too far. That’s probably not what he wanted us to get out of “Longneck Bottle,” and certainly no crack at his character. He was just starting to represent an already-bygone era that was better with the likes of him more prominently in the mix.

THE TREND?

Well that was probably our shortest entry since the ‘60s – when a modest handful of hits could rule a whole year – and easily the snarkiest. I typically prefer earnestness, optimism and laid-back humor to sarcasm and derision (so the internet’s probably an awful place for me) but these songs are getting to me, and not in the way classic Haggard or Wynette gets to you. Also, there’s fewer of them, because long runs at the top remain back in vogue. Which at the time meant if you didn’t like a song but it caught on with the rest of the industry, you were going to be beaten over the head with it for a month or so. The internet was becoming more of a thing for the average American at this point, and the last few years of rock music and movies had revealed that independent voices with unique visions could do big business under the right circumstances: if mainstream anything wasn’t doing it for you anymore, you had options that were getting easier to find. Still, Nashville doubled down on the suburbanization of country music, perhaps theorizing that the teens brought into the fold by the first round of Garth, Alan, etc. might be settling into marriage and mortgage by now. It wasn’t a unilateral move, but things were trending back towards the “music for Middle American adults” approach that pigeonholed the business back before the turn-of-the-decade boom. But this time it was also leaning hard on the wholesome and family-friendly, fine for driving the kids to daycare but nothing anyone under 30 would want to crank up on a Saturday night. No wonder the Texas bar-band dudes and edgy alt-country envelope-pushers were finding some purchase.

THE RANKING

1. Carrying Your Love With Me – George Strait
2. One Night At a Time – George Strait
3. It’s A Little Too Late – Mark Chesnutt
4. There Goes – Alan Jackson
5. Nobody Knows – Kevin Sharp
6. It’s Your Love – Tim McGraw (with Faith Hill)
7. A Man This Lonely – Brooks & Dunn
8. How Do I Get There – Deana Carter
9. Everywhere – Tim McGraw
10. Love Gets Me Every Time – Shania Twain
11. Come Cryin’ to Me – Lonestar
12. Longneck Bottle – Garth Brooks
13. How Was I To Know – Reba McEntire
14. Running Out of Reasons to Run – Rick Trevino
15. We Danced Anyway – Deana Carter
16. She’s Got it All – Kenny Chesney
17. (This Ain’t No) Thinkin’ Thing – Trace Adkins
18. Me Too – Toby Keith
19. How Your Love Makes Me Feel – Diamond Rio
20. Rumor Has It – Clay Walker
21. From Here to Eternity – Michael Peterson
22. Sittin’ On Go – Bryan White

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Those Texas bar-band folks that I mention here and there, usually in the context of being one of my go-to alternatives to the increasingly watered-down mainstream country as the '90s wore on? Once in awhile they sprout someone who makes the leap to the mainstream or at least something resembling it. Once upon a time that was grounds for over-the-top backlash (e.g. Pat Green, who deserved better) and even at best usually just resulted in a flash of Nashville relevance (Eli Young Band, Jack Ingram) or at least a profile boost in the margins (Charlie Robison, Wade Bowen). But some of the more recent success stories are still works in progress; who knows, Cody Johnson and Parker McCollum may well end up being among the flagship artists of this era in modern mainstream country. We spotlighted Johnson's cover of Reba McEntire's "Whoever's in New England" a decade or so back; as high-profile cover options dwindle the closer we get to present-day, I was pleased to stumble across a studio-crafted cover of "Carrying Your Love With Me" by Parker McCollum. McCollum's songwriting talents have at least the potential to reach listeners across demographics (I really like several of his originals), but his burgeoning fandom among really-young (and often really-female) audiences also gives him opportunity to unearth hits that seem pretty recent to the middle-aged among us. Late-'90s tunes, even by names as enduring as George Strait, probably feel like rustic echoes of a simpler time to the gals in the front row at a P-Mac (people call him that right?) concert, so good on him for keeping it in the mix.