“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
- You Were Mine – The Dixie Chicks
- Wrong Again – Martina McBride
- No Place That Far – Sara Evans
- Write This Down – George Strait
- Please Remember Me – Tim McGraw
- Stand Beside Me – Jo Dee Messina
- Right On the Money – Alan Jackson
- Breathe – Faith Hill
- I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing – Mark Chesnutt
- He Didn’t Have to Be – Brad Paisley
- When I Said I Do – Clint Black with Lisa Hartman Black
- I Love You – Martina McBride
- Something Like That – Tim McGraw
- Single White Female – Chely Wright
- Amazed – Lonestar
- You Had Me at Hello – Kenny Chesney
- How Forever Feels – Kenny Chesney
- 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.
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