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