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
It’s
Getting Better All the Time – Brooks & Dunn
Come
a Little Closer – Dierks Bentley
Making
Memories of Us – Keith Urban
As
Good As I Once Was – Toby Keith
A
Real Fine Place to Start – Sara Evans
Some
Beach – Blake Shelton
My
Give a Damn’s Busted – Jo Dee Messina
Something
To Be Proud Of – Montgomery Gentry
Anything
But Mine – Kenny Chesney
Mud
on the Tires – Brad Paisley
Must
Be Doing Something Right – Billy Currington
Tequila
Makes Her Clothes Fall Off – Joe Nichols
Play
Something Country – Brooks & Dunn
Nothin’
to Lose – Josh Gracin
Awful,
Beautiful Life – Darryl Worley
Mississippi
Girl – Faith Hill
That’s
What I Love About Sunday – Craig Morgan
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."
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
I
Hate Everything – George Strait
Remember
When – Alan Jackson
Suds
in the Bucket – Sara Evans
Live
Like You Were Dying – Tim McGraw
Girls
Lie Too – Terri Clark
American
Soldier – Toby Keith
Nothing
On But the Radio – Gary Allan
Watch
the Wind Blow By – Tim McGraw
Some
Beach – Blake Shelton
When
the Sun Goes Down – Kenny Chesney & Uncle Kracker
Whiskey
Girl – Toby Keith
Back
When – Tim McGraw
Redneck
Woman – Gretchen Wilson
You’ll
Think of Me – Keith Urban
There
Goes My Life – Kenny Chesney
Days
Go By – Keith Urban
If
You Ever Stop Loving Me – Montgomery Gentry
Somebody
– Reba McEntire
In
a Real Love – Phil Vassar
Mayberry
– Rascal Flatts
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.
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 16th 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
Travelin’
Soldier – The Dixie Chicks
Tough
Little Boys – Gary Allan
Brokenheartsville
– Joe Nichols
It’s
Five O’Clock Somewhere – Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett
Red
Dirt Road – Brooks & Dunn
Beer
for My Horses – Toby Keith with Willie Nelson
What
Was I Thinkin’ – Dierks Bentley
Man
to Man – Gary Allan
I
Love This Bar – Toby Keith
Three
Wooden Crosses – Randy Travis
I
Believe – Diamond Rio
Who
Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me – Keith Urban
19
Somethin’ – Mark Willis
Real
Good Man – Tim McGraw
The
Baby – Blake Shelton
There
Goes My Life – Kenny Chesney
Have
You Forgotten? – Darryl Worley
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.
