2006 - I know there's nothing stopping you now ...

We’re definitely hitting a spot here where a lot of these songs are a vague memory to me and the context is a bit fuzzier because, in the moment, I was largely tuning out on mainstream country. Well into the internet age where it gets a little easier to find stuff that speaks to you. By this time I was checking out community radio, figuring out how to download tracks, had a nice collection of CDs (remember those?) that leaned heavily towards alt-country, Americana, Texas/Red Dirt, etc. that I felt either echoed the sort of country music I grew up on or at least took it in more interesting and satisfying directions than the vast majority of the contemporary guard of radio country.

Even George Strait was in a bit of a doldrums, although it was nice to see him hanging in there. When I was a kid in the early ‘80s he was one of the only young guys you heard on the radio, nudging his way in amidst the Kenny Rogers and Conway Twitty hits; as a young adult in the mid 2000’s, he was the only (relatively) old guy on the radio. “She Let Herself Go” is a charming enough narrative, a you-go-girl tale that probably made a lot of longtime female fans who’d aged with him feel seen. But it also had that whiff of suburban blandness to it that was permeating the whole scene.

Carrie Underwood made one of the bigger splashes the genre had seen for awhile with “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” A college cheerleader-pretty blonde riding the red-hot crest of a season four American Idol victory, she was about as safe as a bet gets in modern country-pop. Huge expressive voice, telegenic nice-gal vibe, and a debut song that spoke to all the good suburban Christian gals who’d had anything resembling a rough time with something. I know I wasn’t the target audience for it but it’s impossible not to see why it worked, to the tune of six weeks at #1 and launching one of the few careers on this year’s list that’s still going nearly as strong today.

The thread of earnest piety continued with Brad Paisley and no less a special-guest luminary than Dolly Parton pouring their hearts into the tender inspirational ballad “When I Get Where I’m Going.” By this time – this was his 14^th #1 – Paisley had pretty well positioned himself as the nice-guy avatar of something resembling real-deal traditional country, and goosing radio to get a legend like Parton back in the mix was very on-brand for him (I don’t mean that as cynical as it might sound, and don’t doubt he was thrilled to collaborate with Dolly). Lyrically, the song pretty much sticks to the contemporary-Christian playbook, but it’s elevated by performance, with Paisley’s warm humility giving Parton’s distinct emotive twang a base to soar off of. Even if you never tuned into a country station in your life, you’ve probably heard this one at at least a couple of funerals by now.

Josh Turner was also getting some credit for keeping something resembling traditional country in the mainstream mix – 2003’s “Long Black Train” was a modest hit with some well-earned acclaim – but he had the sort of deep, rounded baritone that could make just about anything sound at least palatable. “Your Man” was warm, sincere, and playfully affectionate, the sort of thing George Strait would’ve happily tackled if he got to it first (fun fact: future headliner Chris Stapleton was among the co-writers). Kenny Chesney continued to be on a roll despite having one of – at least these ears – the least distinctive voices in country music history. It doesn’t grate, even if his material sometimes did, but it’d be tough to pick out of a lineup of straightforward Music Row demo singers. “Living in Fast Forward,” which I’d either never heard or totally forgotten, actually does have some rock & roll bite to it; it sounds a lot like a Georgia Satellites song with some fiddle thrown in. It was co-written by then-recent hitmaker David Lee Murphy, and if it’s not quite as good as his best stuff, it’s a nice enough groove.

Rascal Flatts remained typically groove-averse on “What Hurts the Most,” which ladled on Gary LeVox’s big gravelly tenor like syrup. I’m still not exactly who these guys were supposed to be for; sometimes it seems they were vaguely presented as country music’s answer to the pop boy-band craze, but were teen girls really digging this sort of thing en masse? Every guy I knew back then found them pretty off-putting, and a lot of people with more hard-country tastes considered their proliferation on country radio to be sort of the last straw. Still, they were an arena-level act by this time, and this song spent a solid month at #1. That can’t all just be music-marketing fuckery, can it? If you wanted bland pop-rock, Bon Jovi was way better at it and guess what: they’re up next! Yep, the onetime poodle-haired multiplatinum stadium rockers continued their trajectory from something like pop-metal to earthier pop-rock to, at least for one track, mid-2000s radio country. Apparently “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” was originally supposed to be a collaboration with Keith Urban, but lead singer Jon Bon Jovi decided they sounded too much like each other (I’ve never noticed, but I guess I don’t listen to either very much) and recruited Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles instead. Not a bad song, really … Bon Jovi’s goodhearted gusto packed stadiums for decades for a reason, and their crowd-pleasing approach to arena rock was arguably a pretty big influence on the aesthetics of 2000s big-production country-pop. Having them in the mix long enough to hit #1 might have seemed jarring if you were looking into the future from 1988 or so, but in 2006 they fit like a glove, for better or worse.

Jack Ingram, a personal favorite of mine, had a decidedly different path to #1. He’d been toiling in the bar-band trenches since the mid ‘90s, a young Texas singer-songwriter steeped in the outlaw classics of Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker, part of a scene of largely like-minded folks such as Pat Green, Cory Morrow, and Charlie Robison who correctly asserted that increasingly bland modern mainstream country could use a rowdier, scrappier alternative. But unlike some of the others who leaned hard into the whole “Nashville sucks” catchphrase for at least a while, Ingram (and Robison, RIP) were stubbornly optimistic that they could enforce some change from the inside. A good-looking dude with notable laconic charm, Ingram’s previous singles caught on more with country video channels than radio, but after years of not even cracking the Top 40 he finally notched his first and (to date) only radio #1 with “Wherever You Are.”  It was more Keith Urban than Jerry Jeff, but Ingram’s gritty vocal panache injected enough personality to make it stick. He wouldn’t crack the Top 10 again, but he’d hang around the Top 20 for a few more years before getting back to indie basics.

Indie basics weren’t a concern for newcomer Jason Aldean, a onetime Georgia baseball prospect who was swinging for the fences from the get-go. “Why” makes a good enough case for him as a generic balladeer in the tradition of Mark Wills or early Kenny Chesney or whatever; it’s not great but it’s not bad, a sincere enough slab of self-recrimination without getting all weepy or unmanly about it. Down the line, of course, he’d cultivate a tough-guy image with unsubtle chunks of hip-hop, hard rock, and country-boy belligerence turned up heavy in the mix as he arguably co-created the whole “bro country” thing that’d be all the rage a few years down the line. So even if I wasn’t really paying attention at the time I’m still oddly nostalgic for him singing sensitive numbers about his own screw-ups.

Dierks Bentley continued to play to his considerable strengths as a vocalist; “Settle for a Slowdown” hews pretty close to the “Come a Little Closer” blueprint, recast as a plea for romantic reconciliation instead of just a solid come-on. A nice hearty ballad with Bentley’s formidable baritone keeping the saccharine at bay. Kenny Chesney was also sticking with what works; it doesn’t take a marketing genius to put out “Summertime” in early June, and by now he’d established himself as both somewhat of a beach-bum persona and also a stadium-worthy live act. I’ve never been to a Chesney concert but I hear that they draw well and everyone seems to have a blast. He seems like a nice dude who’s made the absolute most out of his success; stuff like “Summertime” might pander a bit but it’s not actively obnoxious even to a non-fan like myself. Songs about simple pleasures can be simple pleasures themselves if you don’t go all music-critic on them I guess.

Brad Paisley had a similar mindset, albeit one considerably more interested in hot-pickin’ traditional country as at least a component of his style. He was easing into superstar range himself at this point and bighearted songs like “The World” sure didn’t hurt. It’s easy to cynically dismiss it as too cute, but the warmhearted, reassuring throughline of reminding someone of their unique importance sounded sweet then and holds up nicely now. Newcomer Rodney Atkins was in an encouraging mood too with “If You’re Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows),” a barreling-along ode to perseverance that threatened to give big-production country-rock a good name for a minute there. Atkins had a hearty enough voice to elbow himself out a place in all that business and was well-cast for the song’s tough-but-empathetic tone. Atkins is sort of forgotten nowadays (unless you recall what I guess was a never-be-photographed-without-a-ballcap gimmick) but he was a bit of a force for a half-decade or so, although he never topped this one. “If you’re going through hell, keep on going … you might get out, before the devil even knows you’re there” might sound like motivational-poster filler on paper, but on record it packed a punch.

It wasn’t entirely impossible to get something a little more delicate to hit, even though it was getting to a point where any female artist not named Carrie Underwood was hard-pressed to score a #1. The Wreckers sounds like it could be a name for some macho blues-rock band but it was actually pop singer-songwriter Michelle Branch joining forces with her more country-ish pal Jessica Harp to more or less make pretty pop-folk and just market it as country. Not too shabby, and probably would’ve been a crossover hit back in the Lilith Fair days, but the duo either got bored with it or kind of saw the writing on the wall … this was their first and last big single and they were more or less done a year later. It was sweet of them to move aside for Steve Holy’s dumbassed “Brand New Girlfriend,” one of the most embarrassing couple of minutes of recorded music across the history of genres. Two minutes of bouncily excruciating dipshittery with Holy vocally hamming it up over lines about toilet seats and “shi tzu hounds.” It makes Collin Raye’s “That’s My Story” look like “Amarillo By Morning” by comparison. It’s the kind of crap that just sort of assures you that whatever makes it to #1 probably has as much to do with wheeler-dealer Music Row grab-ass as it does with quality or even crowd-pleasingness. Because who the hell in the listening public asked for this? Holy hadn’t had a big hit since 2001’s more-gently-annoying “Good Morning Beautiful” and he wouldn’t have another one.

George Strait swung in mercifully with the appropriately despondent-sounding “Give it Away,” a heavy-hearted ballad about a jilted lover who’d just as soon see his life’s possessions hauled off to Goodwill or left with his embittered ex, all value tainted by regret and impending loneliness. You know, a country song! For functioning adults with real life problems! What a concept, right? It was one of his best in awhile, and that’s really saying something. Then again, if the guard did have to change, I guess we could do worse than Josh Turner and the sort of genuine warmth and charm he managed to cook up on “Would You Go With Me.” So vocally gifted that it’s almost cheating, Turner’s humble-Christian-dude lifestyle and knack for balancing contemporary commercial expectations with something resembling his own artistic personality was miles ahead of most of his competition. I don’t know if he ever broke through to that next-level stardom that guys like Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, et al enjoyed, but he’d thankfully be a steady presence in the mainstream for years to come.

And then there was Heartland, which sounds like what you might come up with if someone gave you five seconds to come up with a name for a country band. The most fleeting of pan flashes, they got a hold of a song called “I Loved Her First” that sounds like what you might come up with if someone gave you ten minutes to come up with a song for a daddy-daughter dance at a wedding. They tugged a few heartstrings and faded as fast as they emerged. Dierks Bentley, who probably got mixed up with Josh Turner sometimes because they were both young guys with baritone voices who sounded like they actually gave a damn, swung back in with “Every Mile a Memory.” It’s not a stone classic or anything but it’s pleasant enough, going down smooth and sincere with a tasteful touch of heartland-rock pulse.

Despite the overall paucity of female singers on top at this point, 2006 was pretty much Carrie Underwood’s year in country music. Not that she’d fade out anytime soon (as of this writing she’s still pretty huge) but her 2006 breakthrough hits are probably still her biggest, or maybe it just seems that way to me because this was sort of my last gasp as even a semi-regular country radio listener. But the semi-weathered piety of “Jesus Take the Wheel” (and an in-between #2 hit called “Don’t Forget to Remember Me” that I’ve, uh, forgotten) gave way to the you-go-girl swagger of “Before He Cheats.” It’s hardly timeless but at least it’s tightly focused, a quick little vengeful vignette about vandalizing some philandering jerk’s car while he’s in the bar trying to bone some other gal who sings “some white trash version off Shania karaoke.” It gave her a chance to swagger around in a music video looking vaguely edgy in case her downhome cutie-pie thing wasn’t doing it for everybody; she was playing the long game and it worked.

Then again, so did Rascal Flatts in general, so that doesn’t say much for the era. “My Wish” isn’t overly grating, it’s just staunchly generic and vaguely positive, the sort of thing you’d play over a photo montage of a grade-school class at the end of the year, or maybe at a high-school graduation while the kids roll their eyes at the insipidness of it all. I hope you’re happy and you do nice things, etc. etc. If you wished for a better song to wrap up the year, then at least you got one with Sugarland and “Want To.” Sugarland had already been knocking around the chart for a year or so, starting as a trio from the Atlanta folk scene but fairly easily retooled as a country act. Lead singer Jennifer Nettles hit #1 before her band did – she was the one who had a #1 hit with Bon Jovi, of all things, earlier in the year – but “Want To” was the first of several #1’s they’d score under the Sugarland banner. The group had already been pared down early on with the departure of cofounder Kristen Hall (that’d be a lawsuit, eventually), and remaining member Kristian Bush often seemed a bit superfluous; sure, he was a well-trained multi-instrumental talent, but Nettles’ big, warm, honeyed twang was always the real draw. Bush’s slightly-dorky hipster image was one thing, and Hall’s whole middle-aged openly-lesbian aesthetic might’ve been more (or less?) than the genre was ready for at the time, but it’d be awhile before the conventionally-appealing Nettles was pushed as a solo. Anyway, “Want To” was a nicely mature bit of longing that made the most out of the now-duo’s talents, and it’s kind of too bad it didn’t signal the direction this whole thing might be going.       

THE TREND?

So here we are, about a decade and a half after the early ‘90s country boom, and it sort of looks like the genre weathered the gratingly wholesome suburban cornballery of the early oughts to have a little more youth appeal in the mix with the likes of Carrie Underwood, Dierks Bentley, and (much as I don’t like acknowledging it) Rascal Flatts. But that’s a triumph of marketing, not music, and much of what’s rising to the top at this point is pretty bland and toothless. There’s no shortage of emoting but less and less of it sticks to the ribs. The previous decade’s influx of young talent (Alan Jackson, Clint Black, etc.) are mostly squeezed out of the upper reaches of the chart at this point and most of that recognizably-country approach seems to have squeezed out with them, making country seem less like a genre and more like a marketing category. A white-bread branch of easy listening populated by eager-to-please gals and (mostly) guys who were too twangy to go pop even if that’s where most of their musical instincts seem to lie. As the top ten or so songs down there suggest, it’s not some black hole of perpetual lousiness or anything, and it’s not like lightweight pop passing itself off as country hadn’t been done on and off for decades at this point. But to these ears, either quality control was getting out of whack or the tastemakers wanted less and less country flavor, and nobody was stopping them.  

THE RANKING

1. When I Get Where I’m Going – Brad Paisley featuring Dolly Parton
2. Give It Away – George Strait
3. Settle For a Slowdown – Dierks Bentley
4. Wherever You Are – Jack Ingram
5. If You’re Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows) – Rodney Atkins
6. Want To – Sugarland
7. The World – Brad Paisley
8. Would You Go With Me – Josh Turner
9. She Let Herself Go – George Strait
10. Jesus Take the Wheel – Carrie Underwood
11. Your Man – Josh Turner
12. Every Mile a Memory – Dierks Bentley
13. Leave the Pieces – The Wreckers
14. Living in Fast Forward – Kenny Chesney
15. Who Says You Can’t Go Home – Bon Jovi with Jennifer Nettles
16. Summertime – Kenny Chesney
17. Before He Cheats – Carrie Underwood
18. My Wish – Rascal Flatts
19. I Loved Her First - Heartland
20. What Hurts the Most – Rascal Flatts
21. Brand New Girlfriend – Steve Holy

DOWN THE ROAD ...

George Strait's solemn 2006 stomper "Give it Away" was written by a Nashville dream team of sorts ... I never quite got the vocal stylings of Bill Anderson during his recording-artist heyday, but as a writer he's got his name on some primo stuff down through the decades. Songwriter/producer Buddy Cannon has helped Willie Nelson and Kenny Chesney, among others, crank out countless songs. Triumvirate filler-outer Jamey Johnson has been one of the prime bearers of the traditional-country torch since the early 2000s, co-writing a mainstream hit here and there (like, say, "Give it Away") and recording a handful of landmark albums for modern aficionados of timeless sounds. Hearing Johnson's earthy baritone voice will always make you glad he didn't confine himself to the writer's room; hell, he can even hold his own with a country powerhouse like Lee Ann Womack. Check them out saluting Strait himself from just a few yards away (no pressure, folks!) from a TV special honoring him as the Academy of Country Music's "Artist of the Decade" for the early 2000s. 

 

2005 - I always thought that I'd do somethin' crazy ...

So 2004 wasn’t an anomaly; if years were people, 2005 would look 2004 earnestly in the eye and say “good job brother, I’m gonna keep on keepin’ on.” And that brief interaction would be more poignant and meaningful than about 90% of the songs that cheesed their way up to #1 in the twelve months to come.

The weightless but engaging novelty of something like Blake Shelton’s “Some Beach” isn’t going to ruin anyone’s day, even if it gets stuck in your head for the majority of it. It’s easygoing and hummable and if it got four weeks at #1 that speaks more to the paucity of competition than anything. Darryl Worley’s “Awful, Beautiful Life” would seem like a good song if you didn’t understand English; the dynamic beat and scrambling electric guitars with twangy touches of fiddle and steel speaks well for the Nashville studio cats, but every fine line between relatability and flat-out pandering gets artlessly kicked over. Granted, that was becoming country music songwriting’s house style in the era, but that doesn’t let Worley off the hook. He’d done better before, and his shoehorned-in shoutout to the troops in Iraq landed somewhere between gratuitous and cynical.

Brad Paisley’s “Mud on the Tires” kind of trampled the relatable/pandering line too, but at least it was packing a little charm and humor. Yeah, sure, country boys and girls like 4x4 trucks and outdoorsy dates, why not write a song about it? So much of the era’s hits just felt demographically engineered, and you couldn’t help but hear the gears grinding. It seemed hardly anyone was trying to write an emotionally resonant classic, and when they did you’d usually end up with something like Rascal Flatts and “Bless the Broken Road.” Intricately pretty, lots of pious greeting-card poetry about love and gratitude, a kernel of emotional truth coated in so many layers of sugar you just can’t stomach it anymore.

Josh Gracin was a marketing dream in the context of the era, a wholesomely handsome young dude who was both an American Idol contestant and a US Marine when the former was the hottest thing on TV and pro-military sentiment was across the board. They didn’t go overboard trying to paint him as a war hero (sounds like his mostly-stateside stint was uneventful) but he did have a scruffy masculinity not every show-choir kid can muster. “Nothin’ to Lose” is the only time we’re going to need to mention him; I had to go back to remind myself what song it was, because the rapid-fire cornpone lyrics kind of overshadow the hook, but yeah this thing was everywhere. The video was set in a high school with youthful-looking actors making it pretty clear who the target demographic was.

Craig Morgan had a much longer military career and was on the verge of middle age by the time his country music career took off. He’d been an independent-label success story, which was rare in Nashville at the time, but bore little of the scrappy individualism that “indie” implies; “What I Love About a Sunday” was pretty par for his course, an earnest checklist ballad about wholesome churchgoing suburban domestic bliss. Nice things in practice, it’s just really hard to write a compelling song about so Morgan (and songwriters Adam Dorsey and Mark Narmore) settled for reminding everyone their life was swell (or at least could be if they went to church). I can easily buy that Morgan is a tough, honorable guy who’s lived some life. But this and his other chart hits indicate he had a hell of a time turning that into compelling music in an era when that was highly optional anyway.

That was Morgan’s last #1, but Kenny Chesney was going to be one of the genre’s defining dudes for years to come, for better or worse. Stuff like “Anything But Mine” make a pretty good case for him as a purveyor of relatable suburban fantasy; a young-summer-romance fable written by the excellently-named Scooter Carusoe, it’s not exactly full of depth or surprises but there’s a hearty Springsteen pulse bubbling under some nicely detailed lyrics that make you either remember when your life was like this or wish that it at some point was. Brooks & Dunn were similarly determined not to be consigned to ‘90s nostalgia, and despite the unexpected chamber-music intro “It’s Getting Better All the Time” put Ronnie Dunn’s timeless twang to emotionally resonant use. The blend of Broadway-ish melodrama and hard-country sentiments has certainly been done much worse. Given the field, it may well have been the best #1 of the year.

Jo Dee Messina was about to plummet off the charts; “My Give a Damn’s Busted” has a little sincere kick to it that was becoming a rare commodity by then, but feistiness wasn’t enough for a foothold in an era where female voices seemed to be getting gradually crowded out. Keith Urban’s smooth, genre-blurred take on country music was coming to be the predominant strain, but at least he had the good taste to pluck a Rodney Crowell tune like “Making Memories of Us.” It’s a bit fluffy by Crowell standards yet also a little edgy by Urban standards, and better than anything Rascal Flatts was coughing up around that time. “Fast Cars and Freedom” was upbeat and seemed to at least be reaching for an echo of classic heartland rock like Bob Seger, but just couldn’t tap into that sort of greasy authenticity. Toby Keith, by contrast, could go on effortlessly about bar fights and hot twins on “As Good As I Once Was” and sound like a laid-back working-class hero. Seemingly believing himself to be quite the badass but leaving some room for self-deprecating humor, he was fun in the mellow lane he made for himself after easing out of the saber-rattling-military-song one.

Faith Hill was a superstar at this point but determined to let everyone know she was still a down-to-earth “Mississippi Girl,” just like Jennifer Lopez was still Jenny From the Block. “Well I spent a few weeks in California/They put my face on the big movie screen/But that don’t mean I’ve forgotten where I came from/That’s just me chasing dreams …” I don’t know why anyone listened to this more than once, but I guess she’d earned her spot by then and it’d take more than a heaping dose of faux-folksy insipidness to knock her off of it. If anyone else other than Brooks & Dunn had put out a song called “Play Something Country” in this era it would’ve come off as pot-and-kettle bullshit, but it’s not like they were skimping on the twang even if some of their lyrics were starting to land on the dire side of gimmicky.

Country-pop isn’t inherently bad, of course; craft, taste, and sincerity can go a long way, and Sara Evans could muster up enough of all of the above especially with writers as talented as Radney Foster and George Ducas in the tank. “A Real Fine Place to Start” is a real fine song to listen to, sunny and optimistic without feeling emptyheaded or pandering. “Something To Be Proud Of” by Montgomery Gentry wasn’t as finely-calibrated – it does sound kind of focus-grouped by a Fox News panel in its nods to small-town working-class patriotism – but it’s got a big, hearty hook to it and mostly speaks to the nobler side of modern American masculinity. Others have done much worse with the notion.

Keith Urban rolled out another busy mid-tempo number called “Better Life.” Pleasant enough and all, it just sort of blended in with his other similar-sounding songs from that years as well as the glut of contemporary tunes meant to sound like they were replicating common domestic conversations among the listener base with precious little poetic license. But enough people saw themselves in it to keep it at #1 for six solid weeks. A couple years later he’d be married to one of the biggest movie stars in the world (Nicole Kidman, if you’ve never noticed them on the front row of several dozen awards shows) and these stabs at regular-joe striving would get even less convincing. Meanwhile, Dierks Bentley, the memorably-named kid of a Mississippi WWII vet, could do the whole scruffily-relatable thing pretty well: “Come a Little Closer” was a convincingly warm come-on of a song, something that could make the girls take heart and the guys take notes. It was a great fit for his baritone twang, a simple notion done simply well.

I guess it’s too bad this song didn’t close out the year on a promising note; instead we got the kind-of-anonymous Joe Nichols hamming it up on “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off,” which never really gets more amusing than its own title. Dierks did his damnedest to yank the #1 spot back after one week of that mess, but then got edged out for the last week of 2005 by Billy Currington and “Must Be Doin’ Something Right.” Much as I don’t like that bland bit of devotional country-pop, in the longer run he’d have better tunes that at least tried to keep a bit of folksy wit and wisdom in play on country radio. And with occasional exceptions, that’d have to be about as good as it was gonna get.    

THE TREND

Woof. I mean, “Some Beach” almost cracked the top five in the ranking, and some of those titles down there look like they’re retroactively mocking any remaining enthusiasm I had for mainstream country music. “It’s Getting Better All the Time,” “As Good As I Once Was,” “A Real Fine Place to Start,” “Something To Be Proud Of,” “Must Be Doing Something Right,” and perhaps most gallingly “Play Something Country.” It’s not, you’re not, it’s not, it’s not, you’re not, and how about this: just calling something “country” and throwing in a few regional signifiers or nods to working class life doesn’t make you the heir to Merle Haggard. Not everything was terrible, but nothing was really great either, and there’s not a ton of motivation to change when something like “Bless the Broken Road” or “What I Love About Sunday” could hang it at #1 for a month or more. It was very much getting to a point where anyone that wanted something compelling was well-advised to look elsewhere.  

THE RANKING

1. It’s Getting Better All the Time – Brooks & Dunn
2. Come a Little Closer – Dierks Bentley
3. Making Memories of Us – Keith Urban
4. As Good As I Once Was – Toby Keith
5. A Real Fine Place to Start – Sara Evans
6. Some Beach – Blake Shelton
7. My Give a Damn’s Busted – Jo Dee Messina
8. Something To Be Proud Of – Montgomery Gentry
9. Anything But Mine – Kenny Chesney
10. Mud on the Tires – Brad Paisley
11. Must Be Doing Something Right – Billy Currington
12. Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off – Joe Nichols
13. Play Something Country – Brooks & Dunn
14. Nothin’ to Lose – Josh Gracin
15. Awful, Beautiful Life – Darryl Worley
16. Mississippi Girl – Faith Hill
17. That’s What I Love About Sunday – Craig Morgan
18. Bless the Broken Road – Rascal Flatts

DOWN THE ROAD ...

We're having to really think outside the box to find covers of songs this recent, but that can be its own kind of intriguing. I'm not sure how else I'd stumble across someone like Jajai Singsit, a (the only?) country singer from the Manipur region of India. I'm not well-traveled enough to know if there are any good honky tonks around there for him to book gigs at but the depth of his country music appreciation seems to have taken him well beyond sort-of-recent Keith Urban hits and into the catalogs of all-timers like George Strait, Don Williams and Jim Reeves. I don't know much else about the guy or how he happened to get into this, but he does have a lovely, resonant voice (mostly reminescent of Reeves himself) and even a pretty convincing twang. If I'm ever around Manipur I'll try to catch a set, but in the meantime here's him covering the Rodney Crowell-penned 2005 Keith Urban smash "Memories of Us."

2004 - and life was changed, disassembled, rearranged ...

So though I’m not crazy about the trends going around as we ease into the mid aughts, I’d still call it a mixed bag. If I had a mix CD with the first nine songs in the ranking for 2004 I’d probably give it a nostalgia listen now and then, if I could find a CD player nowadays. If I had a mix CD with the last nine songs I’d probably intentionally break any existing CD players I had.

And now we’re at the point that with every passing year the percentage of songs I don’t remember is roughly matching the number of songs I actually like. “Have you forgotten,” Darryl Worley might ask, and I’d say yes but with good reason. Kenny Chesney and “There Goes My Life” held over from 2003 for the whole month of January, bland and wispy as ever, perhaps inspiring a New Year’s resolution to change the station. But then Alan Jackson puts out the tender, sincere “Remember When” and you do sort of remember when country radio seemed relatable and engaging without crossing fully over into simplistic and pandering. Or maybe even propagandizing, like Toby Keith with “American Soldier.” Don’t get me wrong, I think he meant every word when he sang it and had legit gratitude and respect for US troops. But the mainstream radio business making sure everyone hears it every hour on the hour feels like an overplayed hand no matter the original intent.

Presumably they played the hell out of Tim McGraw’s “Watch the Wind Blow By” too if it spent two weeks at #1, but I don’t recall it and after a listen my memory remains stubbornly unjogged. Not a bad tune, it’s got a little country-soul pulse to it and some decent lovey-dovey lyrics. But it’s hardly unforgettable and maybe a sign that I was checking out as a listener around this era. I do remember Kenny Chesney teaming up with non-country Kid Rock cohort Uncle Kracker for the beachy midtempo party tune “When the Sun Goes Down,” but I recall it more from people complaining about it than actually hearing it. Folks were expressing suspicion at the idea of dragging in B-listers from other genres, as if Kenny Chesney was incapable of cranking out genreless fluff all by himself; really, just taken on its own lightweight merits, it’s far from the worst song of the year.

I do recall Keith Urban’s “You’ll Think of Me” fairly well, seems it was on constantly, it’s a slow one but still hooky enough to get stuck in your head. Not much meat on the bone, but Urban’s subtle delivery is seldom hard to listen to. “Mayberry,” by Rascal Flatts, is another story. Lead singer Gary LeVox’s tenor could get outta hand quick, sandpaper to the ears even if he’s technically hitting the notes, sort of like a country version of Rush. I don’t know who this song was supposed to be for, invoking the fictional town from The Andy Griffith Show as a framework for a bunch of clunky, insipid lines that could’ve been about pretty much any small town ever … were fans of that show even listening to mainstream country radio anymore? To me it seemed like RF was pretty much always pitched to the teen girl audience who didn’t even remember Matlock, much less vintage Griffith. But maybe that strategy hadn’t kicked in yet for them.

If you were wishing they’d get back to giving female artists a chance, you may have wanted your wish back with newcomer Gretchen Wilson and “Redneck Woman.” On one hand, she could sing her ass off, and befitting her brash approach she looked and dressed more like the barmaid at a biker bar than the Disney princesses you tend to end up with nowadays. But the song was kind of unfortunate, a string of shout-outs to familiar brands and people (Wal Mart, Bocephus, Barbie) that felt way less authentic than Wilson herself probably was. The sort-of-new duo Montgomery Gentry leaned pretty hard into the brash shitkicker aesthetic and often did it in service of some pretty good material (“She Couldn’t Change Me,” for example); they were about a half-decade into their chart life when “If You Ever Stop Loving Me” scored them their first #1 for some reason. It’s a big thumpy track with a lot of big guitars dueling it out, there’s just not much hook or lyrical depth to distinguish it. Toby Keith could’ve well been singing about a Gretchen Wilson-esque party gal on “Whiskey Girl,” with lines like “she needs somethin’ with a little more edge and a little more pain” perhaps coming on a little stronger than Keith even intended. A lot of that gentlemanly George Strait stuff seemed to be going out the window in favor of lots of self-styled redneck attitude.

Not always, though. Tim McGraw didn’t have a perfect batting average when it came to picking material, but he was more likely than most to go with a thoughtful, mature number like “Live Like You Were Dying.” A memorable tale of cancer scares and bucket-list dreams and renewed appreciation for life, it’d probably hit harder if I was hearing it for the first time in my current middle age, but even as a relative pup I respected the craft and sincerity. Canadian cowgirl Terri Clark took another ride to the top with the upbeat, sort-of-amusing “Girls Lie Too,” a bit of cheeky pushback against us smug bumbling dudes in the audience. Reba McEntire of all people popped back in for a week with “Somebody” – hey, we haven’t been great about promoting new women, but turns out we had some good ones right here all along! But maybe the shipment of singles didn’t make it to Bryan-College Station because again, I don’t remember this song at all. It sounds more Broadway than country and hinges around some awkward rhymes and plot twists. It’s like a four-minute romantic comedy that still somehow feels too long. McGraw boomeranged back around her one week on top and held down #1 for the rest of the summer.

Keith Urban scored again with a busy mid-tempo number called “Days Go By” that I guess I always assumed was one of his other similar-sounding busy mid-tempo numbers. Some of this stuff makes you wonder how many people actively loved this stuff as opposed to just accepting it; despite Urban’s chops, it’s all pretty weightless and indistinct. Just a vague “live life to the fullest” message that barely distracts, much less inspires. Sara Evans’ “Suds in the Bucket” had more lyrical charm and a more memorable hook, not to mention some big tasty doses of fiddle and steel guitar and lots of telegenic camera flirting in the video (yes I had a crush on her, sue me). Folks were having a breezy good time until George Strait sauntered in and went memorably dour with “I Hate Everything,” which may well have reflected how he was starting to feel about this chart. But really, it’s a song about a beleaguered divorcee cathartically spilling his guts to a stranger in a bar who’s immediately inspired to go home and mend fences with his hopefully-just-temporarily-pissed-off wife. Though it ends on a hopeful note and doesn’t go to the rip-your-heart out emotive extremes of, say, “Chiseled in Stone,” it was just nice to have someone dishing up unmistakable sad country songs in the top spot (and really unsurprising who it ended up being).

Motormouthed cheesemeister Phil Vassar swooped in again with “In a Real Love,” which sounds like a fast-talking, slightly retooled theme song to some ’80 family sitcom nobody remembers. His next single was called “I’ll Take That As A Yes (The Hot Tub Song),” it didn’t earn #1 consideration but you can certainly go listen to it if you want to. Not to be outdone, Lonestar came along and outshit the bed with what may well be the dad-country nadir: “Mr. Mom.” Not to be associated with the perfectly-acceptable Michael Keaton comedy film (Keaton should sue their ass), I’m sure the song thought it was pretty damn clever with its tale of a bumbling dad laid off from work who takes over childcare so his wife can bring home the bacon for a while. And yeah I guess there probably were some listeners who chuckled and said “ain’t that the truth?” or words to that effect at the lines about Pampers in the dryer or melted crayons or Barney etc. but I don’t see why the hell anyone would want to hear this more than once unless the members of Lonestar owed them money. And even then it’s not worth it.

Gary Allan singing about two young lovers with “Nothing On But the Radio” isn’t the most original wordplay you’ll likely hear but it sounds like the absolute soul of wit compared to some of the crap piled around it. Plus it’s got a nice little groove and Allan singing it; by 2004 standards it’s aces. Tim McGraw came shufflin’ back in with “Back When,” a stack of folksy one-liners yearning for a simpler time that just rings a little false coming from someone who was a bona-fide superstar by then. “I’m readin’ Street Slang for Dummies/Cause they put pop in my country,” McGraw sings, and nice a guy as he seems to be that’s kind of like pissing down your neck and telling you it’s rainin’. Just because he never managed to de-twang his voice doesn’t mean that he wasn’t also at least sometimes trying to cram as much synthetic gloss into a “country” song as whoever this particular song might’ve been pointing fingers at. Maybe I’m just thinking too hard about all this. I like some of his stuff, I don’t mean to be a grouch but the mid-aughts are starting to get to me kind of like they did back then.

The year ended with Blake Shelton doing a pretend-grouch act on “Some Beach.” Yes it’s supposed to sound like you’re pronouncing “sumbitch,” and yes that’s about as funny as it gets, but it doesn’t overplay its hand and it is fairly tuneful and charming. Guess we can talk about that in 2005 where it spent most of its #1 run. The way things are going it might be the greatest song of that particular year.   

THE TREND?

I don’t actually hate everything, but man it’s getting harder to love any of it. Bless George Strait and Alan Jackson for hanging in there; at this point it’d been four years since they recorded the lament/critique “Murder on Music Row” and though it hadn’t gotten them ridden out of town on a rail by a bunch of ingrates, it also didn’t seem to change enough hearts or minds to affect the top of the charts much. The wholesome suburban sheen of it all – again, that jokey dad-country stuff is the worst - seemed to only occasionally break for bursts of half-hearted rebellion or actual messy emotion. The previous year they’d had to break the aging likes of Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffett out to give things much of a spark; this year the go-to collaborator was [checks notes] Uncle Kracker. If you were into wit and soul and heartache this not only wasn’t your year, it was one that made you wonder if you’d ever see it again without looking to back when.

THE RANKING

1. I Hate Everything – George Strait
2. Remember When – Alan Jackson
3. Suds in the Bucket – Sara Evans
4. Live Like You Were Dying – Tim McGraw
5. Girls Lie Too – Terri Clark
6. American Soldier – Toby Keith
7. Nothing On But the Radio – Gary Allan
8. Watch the Wind Blow By – Tim McGraw
9. Some Beach – Blake Shelton
10. When the Sun Goes Down – Kenny Chesney & Uncle Kracker
11. Whiskey Girl – Toby Keith
12. Back When – Tim McGraw
13. Redneck Woman – Gretchen Wilson
14. You’ll Think of Me – Keith Urban
15. There Goes My Life – Kenny Chesney
16. Days Go By – Keith Urban
17. If You Ever Stop Loving Me – Montgomery Gentry
18. Somebody – Reba McEntire
19. In a Real Love – Phil Vassar
20. Mayberry – Rascal Flatts
21. Mr. Mom - Lonestar

DOWN THE ROAD ...

We're well into the phase where any vaguely high-profile versions of most of these #1s are gonna be performances by semi-celebs from TV singing competitions and/or YouTube channels (there's definitely some overlap there). Likeable young dude Jackson Snelling is one of those ... shortly after Toby Keith's way-too-young passing, he paid timely tribute with his take on "American Soldier." Very nice version, and a bit of a hill to climb tackling a song so closely associated with not only a famous singer but the most famous side of his persona. Between his vocal talents, early start, and the solid production value on these videos, it's not hard to imagine Snelling having his own #1 one of these days.

    

2003 - we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces ...

The early 2000s was an odd time in America. I guess a lot of eras were, but I was actually old enough to remember this one as an employed, news-conscious adult. Pre-millennial tension was violently replaced by post-9/11 anger, grief, and paranoia (but also possibly the closest thing to brief national unity we’d had before or since). An increasing chunk of society was on the internet, downloads of varying legality were starting to encroach on music sales, political discourse was on a sharp upward curve towards nastier, we all had a universe of information (and misinformation) at our fingertips … it was a pretty uneasy time, and 2003’s #1 rundown reflects that in ways that were often obvious then and have in some cases become clearer in retrospect.

George Strait led into the year with a second week for “She’ll Leave You With a Smile,” a comforting throwback to a slightly simpler time. Fun fact: Strait is so damn prolific that this was the second time he’d released a song called “She’ll Leave You With a Smile” … there was an unrelated, not-overly-similar song with the same title by a different writer on his ’97 album. At this point Strait was often one of the few folks to hit #1 that already came with some built-in nostalgia; sometimes the only one in a year, but this time he’d be one of several. Speaking of nostalgia … “19 Somethin’” was explicitly crafted around the idea of recent nostalgia by songwriters David Lee and Chris DuBois and delivered by the reliably anonymous Mark Wills. It wasn’t Wills’ first #1 but it was a rare trip to the top ten and a surprise smash with six weeks at #1. The song’s more a clever parlor trick than anything that’d stick to your ribs – one verse chronicles ‘70s touchstones like Farrah Fawcett and Stretch Armstrong, the next checks off ‘80s stuff like Daisy Duke and parachute pants – but all the same it fed a hunger for earlier days by mostly sticking with the low-stakes amusements with occasional shoutouts to deceased rock stars or astronauts thrown in. It wasn’t deep but it certainly spoke to something.

“The Baby” by Blake Shelton was shooting for more emotional depth; it was big-production but unmistakably country, both in delivery and in its commitment to both melodrama and realism. It’s built around a thinly sketched tale of a favored youngest son who lives a sort of unrooted life but comes rushing back home to his mom’s deathbed, but there’s no real moral or hook to it; one of his brothers calls him “rotten to the core” but is that some affectionate joke or real disdain? Doesn’t seem like the protagonist did anything wrong other than take some jobs out of state and bounce around a little career-wise. It feels kind of like a verse or two was cut for length; as it is, it just doesn’t earn the tears it’s clearly gunning for.

Gary Allan’s “Man to Man” was a much lighter slice of life, a groovy little two-step number following a conversation between a man and his lady’s ne’er-do-well ex. Allan had been in the mix since the mid-‘90s, mid-level as a star but a favorite among discerning fans: he had sort of a gritty integrity about him, a taste in material that drew him to medium-sized hits like “Her Man” and “Smoke Rings in the Dark” that would hold up better than most of the stuff that hit bigger around the same time. His persistence was finally getting rewarded. Whereas the Dixie Chicks’ resistance was about to get considerably less rewarded, unless you’re of the “no such thing as bad publicity!” mindset.

“Travelin’ Soldier” was from the pen of masterful Texas songwriter Bruce Robison, who was at the time the brother-in-law of band member Emily Robison. It was one of the centerpieces on Home, an ambitiously stripped-down album the Chicks released in implied protest of the trend towards loud, shallow high-gloss country pop. The song was a tenderly sympathetic number about young love disrupted by the Vietnam War; given that the USA was entering into a controversial and messy war in Iraq, the parallel was not hard to draw (although the song was written well before all of this). Despite the album’s acoustic modesty, the Chicks’ previous albums had catapulted them into an arena-level act internationally, hence the big show in London where lead singer Natalie Maines made a sentence or two worth of commentary on then-prez George W. Bush and the war effort in general. Essentially she said she was ashamed to call GWB a fellow Texan, it didn’t go much deeper than that.

Had the Chicks been an act in almost any other genre I think this would’ve blown over pretty quickly. Or maybe even if 9/11 didn’t still loom so large in the rearview. Or, honestly, had the president been a Democrat. But some of the nation’s conservative elements had used the aftermath of 9/11 and the changing media landscape (including burgeoning propaganda wings on Fox News and right-wing talk radio) to really circle the wagons, and Nashville was fertile ground for this sort of stuff. The town and the business leaned heavily toward the sort of affluent evangelical Caucasians that tended to be conservative and patriotic, and unlike the rock and pop worlds international artists (and, to some extent, international fans) were a secondary concern at best. Country music could market itself, explicitly or otherwise, as music for Americans by Americans, with the whole white/patriotic/conservative/Christian thing more or less implied.

So the industry was disinclined to provide much defense when right-wing pundits pounced, ginning up outrage amongst their audiences, fueling everything from death threats to album-burning demonstrations to concert venue protests (the Chicks still had a lot of stops left on the Home tour). The #1 single and the rest of their music was immediately yanked at most mainstream country radio stations, either out of righteous indignation or just to avoid public outcry. It’s ironic that it was a sympathetic song about a young soldier, because now the band (and Maines in particular) were widely being painted as unforgivably anti-military. Maines & co. could argue that opposing a questionable military operation is sort of pro-troops – is risking soldiers’ lives worth this particular goal? – but there wasn’t much point in arguing at all. A decade and a half or so later most of the conservative media and fanbase would chuck the Bush legacy under the bus anyway in favor of amped-up Trump-era belligerence, but I doubt the Chicks grudge has subsided much. They’d mostly have to rely on the NPR crowd going forward, making do with various side projects and the occasional reunion album or tour. They remained a big-money draw but a big chunk of their potential audience was gone forever.

NOTE: For anyone who'd like to read further on the Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith, and various other artists who stoked the political climate of country music down the years, I strongly recommend this book, Rednecks & Bluenecks by Chris Willman. It's remarkably well written, researched, and balanced in the sense that I didn't come out of it feeling like Willman was leaning too hard on an agenda or trying to muzzle any of the artists he had access to and interest in. Great read.

Joe Nichols, who was sort of like a twangier Mark Wills, was considerably less of an attention-getter but certainly on his A-game with the melancholy but easy-to-like baritone ramble of “Brokenheartsville.” Just a simple tune with a memorable hook delivered with a bit of twangy conviction; what a concept. Darryl Worley was good at that sort of thing too, and had gotten some decent notice as one of the brighter and more traditionalist new artists in the genre but he took a big right-field swing with “Have You Forgotten?” Unlike with the extremely recent Chicks brouhaha, the song itself was intended to be a button-pushing rally cry, raking the 9/11 coals and shaking listeners by the shoulders with a plea to not drift into complacent political correctness (yes, of course he rhymes “forgotten” with “Bin Laden”). Folks within the business were reluctant to critique it, lest they be stuck in watch-your-back mode alongside the Chicks, but outsiders widely saw it as a cynical attempt to go along with the government’s attempts to use vague links between terrorists headquartered in Afghanistan and the Iraq government to justify an invasion of the latter. Worley co-wrote it, stood by its explicit message, and minimized its implicit ones, so I’m not gonna call the guy cynical even if I didn’t care for the song. Enough people considered it their patriotic duty to listen to it over and over that it spent six weeks at #1. Unlike Toby Keith, the patriotic hit didn’t ensconce him in the forefront of the era’s country artists, even briefly. More like Lee Greenwood, it sort of overshadowed everything else he’d done or would do, but unlike Greenwood the message wasn’t vague enough to book a battleship gig every Fourth of July.

If you were looking for something to lighten things up then tough shit. Randy Travis was almost a nostalgia act at this point, no #1s since ’94 and not much country chart action in general, but he’d been dabbling in gospel too and more or less combined the two with his final #1 “Three Wooden Crosses.” A little morality tale with a plot twist involving multiple deaths, it mostly sounds lovely but stumbles over having to use the word “hooker” repeatedly to describe one of the main characters. I realize that “whore” would’ve sounded meaner and never made it on the radio and “prostitute” doesn’t fit the meter, so I guess even a voice as distinctively rich as Travis’ can’t really make any of them work. Or I guess it could in the moment, because this was his 16^th trip to the top at a point where the industry had written off a guy Garth Brooks himself once lauded as a savior of country music. Brooks himself was contentedly resting on his laurels at this point in a self-imposed temporary retirement, possibly born in part out of a savvy desire to avoid having to struggle for airplay and relevance the way some of his heroes had to after their biggest moments passed. Travis was in the trenches trying to recreate a spot for himself, reportedly going through some serious personal struggles that probably weren’t helping. In retrospect his gifts for warmth and subtlety were conspicuous in their absence from a mainstream that didn’t know what it was missing.

Diamond Rio were also all about the death, and also on their final #1 with “I Believe.” A gentle, sober meditation on a deceased love one’s lingering presence, it was pretty easy to tie this one in on residual 9/11 grief and a possible impending wave of military widows. Then again, grief has an unfortunately timeless relevance to it. It was a good song, good for one last wallow before things took a turn for the upbeat. The first one was provided by Toby Keith and – get this – Willie Nelson! If Randy Travis was starting to seem like a throwback by ’03, Willie must’ve seemed like an outright dinosaur. But then again he’d never really faded from the public consciousness: much like Johnny Cash or Dolly Parton, he was an icon, and he was more accessible than most icons with his constant touring of mid-sized venues, frequent low-key releases of new material for his fans, appearances in commercials and movie cameos, conspicuous marijuana advocacy etc. So it’s not like Keith had to rescue him from obscurity to record “Beer For My Horses.” To the uninitiated who wonder what the hell the song could possibly be about, it was built around a one-liner from an old 1975 action movie called Bite the Bullet (“whiskey for my men and beer for my horses!”) and morphed into a song about righteous men resolving to mow down the bad guys wrecking society. It’s not specifically a pro-war song but could certainly be taken that way, in the context of the times and Keith’s public persona; if it was released today it’d hit pretty different as an implied anthem about taking the culture wars to the point of public violence (let’s not do this). Having Nelson aboard was a pretty smart move in retrospect, not only because few country artists are more worthy of love and respect but also because Willie’s peaceful public image sanded off a lot of the implied obnoxiousness. For what it’s worth, as of this writing Nelson still works it into his solo setlists pretty often, so one can assume he’s proud of it, and not just because he hadn’t had a #1 since 1989 or because he set a record for the oldest artist to feature on a #1 country hit at 70. Not my favorite Willie song, or even my favorite Toby Keith song, but that’s good enough for me. Six weeks at #1, plus in the music video they take down a freakin’ serial killer. Lighthearted fun!

I’m less forgiving about Lonestar and “My Front Porch Looking In.” This is more of that wholesome suburbanite family-friendly tripe that makes me want to push every minivan on the planet off a cliff (not with actual people in them of course) because this is what I assume is playing on their radios. Lines about carrot tops and sippy cups can go straight to hell. I know us “discerning listener” types bitch about the shallow objectifications of bro-country but I kind of blame this sort of dippy dad-country for its existence. Nobody was ever going to listen to this shit at a party, somebody had to do something different even if they weren’t gonna do it especially well. Brooks & Dunn were fairly wholesome and straightforward too on “Red Dirt Road,” but they were typically tasteful enough to make any approach come off at least acceptable (give or take the occasional “Rock My World Little Country Girl”). Plus I like the song’s big Bob Seger-ish sweep and its simple but evenhanded central hook: “there’s life at both ends of that red dirt road.” It’s cool to be proud of where you came from but there’s a big wide world out there and your way ain’t the only way. Let’s bring that mindset back.

And then you get “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” with Alan Jackson and influence/guest star Jimmy Buffett. Buffett has come up several times in this column as an influence and contemporary but not as a #1 artist himself. He sort of lived – nay, thrived – in between genres for decades, kind of a folk singer-songwriter who gradually morphed into a sunny one-man brand. His signature song “Margaritaville” ended up #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart back in 1977 and occasionally he’d crack the country Top 40, but chart hits were largely irrelevant to a guy on his way to becoming a literal billionaire. Because Buffett’s music – which to these ears is occasionally great, often good, other times pretty disposable but at least on-brand – lends itself really well to merchandising and building a whole little subculture around. It’s sort of like the Grateful Dead except with more day jobs in the crowd, often fairly affluent ones that make boats and tropical vacations and pricey concert tickets affordable. Buffett, figuring out early on where his bread was buttered, quickly drifted into making nearly every song on every album tropical/beachy/etc. in sound and/or subject matter to the point where for the rest of our lives any song that involves a white guy singing about beaches or islands or frozen drinks is going to invite Jimmy Buffett comparisons. Alan Jackson’s hard-country bonafides are rarely in question, but he was apparently at least a bit of a Parrothead on the side because he knew just who to call when he wrote a party-hearty anthem about justifying having a drink anytime you damn well felt like it. I got sick of it eventually but it was fun. #1 for eight weeks, plus you see posters or signs or whatever in bars all the time with the title (although I think the expression pre-dates the tune).

Dierks Bentley managed to score a shorter-lived #1 with his debut single “What Was I Thinkin’.” A scruffily handsome youngster with a pleasantly twangy baritone, he was hardly the next Johnny Cash but he at least gave the vibe of somebody who could help steer things back in a more earnestly countrified direction (the video, that bit off the then-recent film Memento, was fun too). Jackson & Buffett took back over for an encore week and then reliable-by-now Tim McGraw swung in with “Real Good Man.” The hook seemed like kind of a groaner to me back then (“I may be a real bad boy/but baby I’m a real good man”) and hasn’t enriched much with age, but I assume this one was more for the ladies anyhow. Gary Allan scored again on his mini-roll with the sincerely touching “Tough Little Boys,” a rumination on how a lot of that macho b.s. falls by the wayside when fatherhood brings out the tender heart in you. Well-observed, well-sung, and as long as you don’t start dropping lines about f’n sippy cups we’re good.

Keith Urban continued to establish his spot in the new guard with “Who Wouldn’t Want to Be Me,” which had the same breezy, kind-of-busy country-pop vibe as his “Somebody Like You” breakthrough. Seems like a nice dude and can shred admirably on the guitar, but it’s hard for his songs to not kind of run together for me; I like him better on ballads with a little more breathing room. Toby Keith continued his new America’s-buddy persona with “I Love This Bar,” an ambling little slice-of-life describing the spectrum of personalities welcome in his favorite watering hole. For someone that amped up the belligerence in service of his art and career now and then, it really was kind of a nice message and probably an industry-approved allegory on what they wanted to see: folks of all walks of life feeling welcome to buy country records and listen to country stations. So not a totally altruistic message, but a friendly one nonetheless. Keith would eventually franchise the song title into an actual bar, albeit not to Margaritaville-level success.

Kenny Chesney closed out the year with “There Goes My Life,” another entry in the dad-country genre, this time an achingly earnest number about a young man worried fatherhood will wreck his vibe until he quickly grows into being a doting dad wondering how it all slipped away so fast. Pleasant enough, relatable to much of the audience, but the then-youthful (and still kind of perpetually youthful, somehow) Chesney just sounded out of his depth on this one. It was a dad-country sort of year; it looks like they sort of forgot to invite any women to the party, and the only ones that showed up got bounced out pretty damn completely.

THE TREND?

Dudes. Wholesome dudes that like to drink but manage to do it free of mayhem and regret in friendly locations. Dudes who only really get mad when it’s patriotic-mad or delve into their emotions when they’re talking about their kids. Dudes who are dads or aspire to be so. Almost no women, although these dudes sound like they treat them with respect unless they badmouth their president or something. Look, I’m not putting the Chicks in the top spot as a statement; free speech never means you’re free from public pushback or consequences, and I don’t reflexively fault anyone who thought they were wrong to the point they didn’t want to listen to them anymore. But I do think the outcry was excessive and ginned up more by cynical opportunists than sincere objectors. And it's all too bad, because that Home album – even more so than the Dixie Chicks’ previous work – spoke to something both more ambitious and more rooted than most of their peers were dishing up. If their career continued apace, I’m not saying they would’ve changed the course of recent country music history, but they might’ve contributed mightily to carving out a more mature, introspective space in it where others could thrive. Instead they inadvertently helped establish that maybe mainstream country music was only for certain kinds of people. Maybe the crowd in Toby Keith’s beloved bar wasn’t as diverse as he liked to pretend.

THE RANKING

1. Travelin’ Soldier – The Dixie Chicks
2. Tough Little Boys – Gary Allan
3. Brokenheartsville – Joe Nichols
4. It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere – Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett
5. Red Dirt Road – Brooks & Dunn
6. Beer for My Horses – Toby Keith with Willie Nelson
7. What Was I Thinkin’ – Dierks Bentley
8. Man to Man – Gary Allan
9. I Love This Bar – Toby Keith
10. Three Wooden Crosses – Randy Travis
11. I Believe – Diamond Rio
12. Who Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me – Keith Urban
13. 19 Somethin’ – Mark Willis
14. Real Good Man – Tim McGraw
15. The Baby – Blake Shelton
16. There Goes My Life – Kenny Chesney
17. Have You Forgotten? – Darryl Worley
18. My Front Porch Lookin’ In – Lonestar

DOWN THE ROAD ...

When the Dixie Chicks' country radio career was struck down in the middle of "Travelin' Soldier"'s run at the charts, the enraged segments of the listenership weren't exactly ready to embrace the irony of their current single being awash in sympathy for the military ... they just wanted them gone. But at least around Texas, I know a few stations that weren't beholden to ClearChannel or other corporate masters managed a little workaround by playing Austin-based songwriter Bruce Robison's still-fairly-recent original version of the song. Robison's sister-in-law Emily was a Dixie Chick as well but I guess the whole extended family wasn't excommunicated. Not for occasional lack of trying ... I do recall a Panhandle-area radio station that banned all music produced by or featuring Lloyd Maines, father of Dixie Chicks frontwoman (and newfound cultural lightning rod) Natalie Maines, because Lloyd didn't publicly distance himself from his daughter. Given Lloyd's stature and prolificacy as a producer, that wiped out about 75% of the popular independent Texas/Red Dirt music available to play. Thankfully, this sort of next-level extended-target belligerence wasn't widespread.

But still, a couple of decades later, it does seem like the mainstream country industry is wary about highlighting connections to the now-just Chicks, and I imagine the feeling's mutual. But speaking of the Texas/Red Dirt scene ... current mainstream country star Cody Johnson came up in it, probably crossing paths with guys like Bruce Robison and Lloyd Maines on the regular en route to getting so big he handily transcended the scene without seemingly burning any bridges along the way. Johnson is sort of retro in the sense of sounding more like the country stars of the late-'80s and '90s than the poppier stuff that followed, so covering "Travelin' Soldier" for one of his well-made YouTube entries isn't too far out of his wheelhouse. It's certainly a nice way to reintroduce a terrific, enduringly relevant song that has been retroactively overshadowed by controversy and flat-out spite.