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
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