Not
to make it all about me, but these writeups are just as much about opinion as
history, so personal context matters I guess: I think 2007 is that tipping
point I’ve been hinting at for the last few entries where I just wasn’t
listening anymore. And that makes sense, because this was around the time I
switched from a day job in Bryan, TX to one in Austin, TX and didn’t have a
mainstream country station playing in the background anymore. The one that I
did listen to in Bryan wasn’t one of those ClearChannel deals, so they didn’t
play absolutely every mainstream hit, and they made some room for classic
country and regional artists like Pat Green, Aaron Watson, Cross Canadian
Ragweed, etc. It was a college town and live music was a big deal, so it might
have been just as much a marketing choice as a matter of principle, but it did
make for a better listening experience for twentysomething me. If you can put
up with the Rascal Flatts there might be a Robert Earl Keen right around the
corner. Could be worse.
But
yeah going down this list of 2007 #1’s, out of 25 songs I can only immediately
remember six, and I’ve got a feeling that my memory’s going to wish it had
stayed unjogged on a lot of the rest. Ah well, nobody’s making me do this, and
even if these pieces are starting to feel more like research than affectionate
reminiscence, I’m gonna press on until the great chart split of 2012 gives us a
logical stopping point.
I’d
forgotten Brad Paisley’s “She’s Everything,” prior to re-listening, but yeah I
didn’t like this one much at the time. Some folks like Paisley are so damn
wholesome (at least as far as I can tell) that their material comes off corny
even if you don’t exactly doubt their sincerity. Its uncomplicated domestic
sweetness doesn’t do much for me but I bet the ladies out there appreciated the
details and overall sentiment as well as Paisley’s warm delivery. Around this
time I think I was mature enough to delineate between “this sucks” and “this is
fine but I’m not the target listener.” I could go a little harder on Rodney
Atkins and “Watching You,” because that opening verse about McNugget Happy
Meals is full-tilt product placement cringe masquerading as regular-guy
relatability. The whole like-father-like-son (in a good way) message is sweet
enough, and I guess once you’ve decided you’re going to write a song like this
there’s no cool or edgy way to do it, but there must be a more interesting way
than what they landed on.
George
Strait was in his mid-50s by 2007, dignity intact even if he usually seemed
willing to meet contemporary sounds halfway. “It Just Comes Natural” had the
sort of big-production rush you’d get from a Kenny Chesney song around the same
time, but his recognizably earthy vocal was a better anchor than anything the
relative youngsters could provide. It’s not one of my 50 or so favorite George
Strait songs but so far, it’s the record of the year. Trace Adkins “Ladies Love
Country Boys” wasn’t much of a threat to displace it, although it did
contribute to the increasing trend of songs that put “country” right in the
title and aggressively pat themselves (and by extension the listeners) on the
back just for identifying as “country.” Nobody who took part in this trend ever
gets to credibly accuse anyone of “virtue signaling” ever again. Maybe I’m just
giving him the benefit of the doubt because he could kick my ass and your ass
without breaking a sweat, but I think Adkins was too talented to be wasting his
time with this kind of mess.
Kenny
Chesney’s “Beer in Mexico” was probably a fun part of his live show, lots of
screaming guitars and some bouncy horns and a chance for a stadium full of Michelob
Ultra cowboys to yell about beer, but it comes off a bit listless on record,
sort of like a late-career Jimmy Buffett song coasting on gimmick and image without
much of anything meaty or insightful to it. Chesney’s buddy Tim McGraw – one of
his few rivals as a stadium-worthy live draw at the time – took the similarly
carefree “The Last Dollar (Fly Away)” to the top of the charts. It’s catchier
and at least a bit more lyrically ambitious but doesn’t quite raise the pulse
or touch the heart. If you like these songs I ain’t mad at you, they’re
carefully engineered to be liked. If you find any deeper resonance to them I’d
genuinely like to hear what and why.
If
mid-oughts country was a person I could see it standing in the corner of my
office staring at me in dismay, shaking his or her head a little, conveying
something like: why are you being mean? I’m just trying to make you a better
person. I guess the memos were getting stuck in my junk folder at this point
but yeah, there’s Carrie Underwood sincerely belting out about how we should
all kick bad habits and take charge of our lives on “Wasted,” and there’s
Rascal Flatts encouragingly warbling about the value of personal resilience on
“Stand,” and there’s Sugarland again defiantly railing against “Settlin’,” in
the sense of accepting anything less than true fulfillment of our desires and
potential. It’s a row of motivational posters set to big grabby arena-friendly
music that’s both generic and genreless. It’s those well-meaning, put-together,
upbeat friendly acquaintances that you just can’t quite identify with enough to
be closer friends. They make you miss your complicated drinking buddies with
relatable problems.
In
this context, Billy Currington and “Good Directions” seemed like a godsend.
Yeah, it’s a little cornball, but amidst all the widescreen inspirational pop
it sounded like Tom T. Hall by comparison. It’s just an easy-rolling grin of a
song about a farm boy’s meet-cute with a briefly-lost single female motorist at
his farm-to-market produce stand, but at least it’s a country song that wants
to be a country song. “Moments,” the only #1 hit for kind-of-anonymous Canadian
country-pop dudes Emerson Drive, took things back to that twang-free easy
listening approach (they’d already done several projects produced by lite-rock
king Richard Marx). But I’ve got to hand it to them: it’s an ambitious song
that works pretty well. The narrative about an old homeless guy’s meaningful
chance meeting with a relatively well-off but despondent younger man probably
could’ve used a smidge more lyrical detail to flesh it out. But what’s there is
good, and the vocals are impassioned without tipping into overwrought. But then
again, they didn’t write it (that’d be Sam & Annie Tate with Dave Berg) and
in a crowded field they kind of faded back away quickly, racking up a few more
years of success in their native Canada as American radio moved on.
Radio
had mostly moved on from Tracy Lawrence too; he’d only cracked the Top 10 once
since 1999 and usually didn’t get particularly close. He’d had troubles both
legal and label but even if he hadn’t, his mini-generation of country singers
had already sort of moved on to the nostalgia circuit for the most part. But he
did score a coup by getting Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw – two of the more
notable names that had eclipsed Lawrence & co. over the past decade – to
guest-star with him on (the kind-of-passive-aggressive) “Find Out Who Your
Friends Are.” Aside from the novelty of three notable country stars taking
turns at the mic, it’s not much of a tune, and it didn’t reestablish Lawrence
as a radio fixture. He’s still out there gigging, no doubt bolstered by the
recent ‘90s-country nostalgia boom, and even a 2017 album full of duets with well-known
young country stars wasn’t enough to get him back in the mainstream mix. Still:
“Sticks and Stones,” “Alibis,” “Time Marches On” … he didn’t define an era or
anything, but the man was a legit country singer who contributed.
Brad
Paisley, for better or worse, was becoming an era-defining star at this point.
Undeniable in talent but hit-and-miss in taste, he must’ve had some interesting
ideas about how to go about romancing a woman, “Mud on the Tires” was one thing
but “Ticks” isn’t afraid to get a little grosser than your average mudhole. “I
wanna check you for ticks” is apparently – to those unschooled in the ways of
redneck intimacy – a roundabout way of requesting close and thorough contact
with a woman’s body somewhere out in the woods or meadows where parasitic
arachnids are a reasonable threat. Paisley was young, handsome, talented and
well on his way to being wealthy, so maybe just about any proposition was
working for him back then. We wouldn’t be talking about it here if it wasn’t a
#1 hit, so it was doing it for somebody, at least for one week in an era where
longer reigns were the norm.
Then
you get “Lucky Man” by Montgomery Gentry, which on one hand is a modest tune
from an act that was pretty good about keeping things recognizably country, but
which also was kind of emblematic of the highly suspicious direction things
were headed in. It’s an earnest, leisurely stroll through the pleasures of
everyday middle-America life that’s implicitly reminding everyone to be
grateful, and by extension content. In a world where income disparities are
piling up, corporations are getting increasingly more creative about watching
their bottom line at everyone else’s expense, and the internet was giving the
most ordinary among us a place to voice their concerns, it felt more and more
like mainstream country music was being used as a mouthpiece. More and more
songs had kind-of-gratuitous shoutouts to patriotism and religion, sneaking in
admonitions that we should all be happy with things as they were, with any
hardship best solved by toughening ourselves up and/or trusting the greater
plan. Remembering to celebrate simple pleasures and treasure the positive
aspects of your life and community is one thing, but often it really seemed
like Nashville was sort-of-subtly doing their part to keep their listenership
in line. Also, that line about “my ticker’s still tickin’ like it should” resonates
weird. Just another reminder modern country was becoming no place for
heartbreak.
Big
& Rich were also happily grateful or gratefully happy or whatever on “Lost
in This Moment,” another one I don’t remember although circa 2007 it was hard
to not notice their act in general. Big Kenny had been trying to get a sunny
pop-rock career off the ground; John Rich had co-fronted onetime hitmakers
Lonestar for most of the ‘90s but departed before they had their pop-crossover
“Amazed” phase. Once paired together like some Great Value take on Brooks &
Dunn, they got everyone’s attention with the weird 2004 almost-top-ten novelty
hit “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy),” with even the loudly conservative Rich apparently
oblivious that that sounds like a theme night at a gay bar. Or maybe they knew
and just didn’t care, there was a big whiff of court-jester comedy and big-tent
inclusiveness in their presentation. They didn’t have a lot of hits but they
did kind of seem like they were on to something for awhile, bringing aboard
country-rapper Cowboy Troy and “Redneck Woman” hitmaker Gretchen Wilson and
finding ways to collaborate with revered old-timers like Kris Kristofferson and
Billy Joe Shaver. It was a little like Nashville started wondering if maybe
they should hedge their bets a bit on the staid white-bread balladry stuff that
was boring their younger and more-adventurous listeners; then again, “Lost in
This Moment” doesn’t reflect that a bit. It’s a standard feel-good pop-rocker
about how pretty a bride is on her wedding day. It’s fine I guess.
Then
here comes Kenny Chesney with “Never Wanted Nothing More,” an even more
aggressive slab of status quo propaganda than “Lucky Man.” OK, maybe
“aggressive” doesn’t apply well to something this breezy and weightless, but
given that it sat blithely at #1 for five straight weeks I guess it got the job
done. Rodney Atkins only got the perch for a week with “These Are My People,”
but it’s in the same vein, giving itself and everyone around it a big pat on
the back for being good hardworking Americans who pray and love and drink
whatever kind of beer buys the most country radio advertisements.
Unlike
some of his less-famous peers that were gradually squeezed off, Garth Brooks
had opted for the superstar prerogative of intentionally dropping out of the
game for awhile. The famously hardworking entertainer probably was legit
exhausted and missing family time, but it was a shrewd strategic move too. The money
was made, the legacy was secure enough if he never sang another note, why not
give folks a chance to miss him a little instead of constantly trying to top
himself once no other country artist could realistically compete with him on
most metrics? He only occasionally tried to have a hit throughout the 2000s,
usually in conjunction with some tour or product release; “More Than a Memory”
was a track from his third compilation album and, as of this writing, his final
#1 radio hit. It set a new record in the industry when it debuted at #1, but it
only hung around a week, perhaps simultaneously proving Brooks still had the
clout to jump to the front of the line but maybe not enough juice (or hell,
maybe not enough inclination … what’s he got to prove?) to stay there all that
long. As for the song itself, even as a Garth fan I don’t really remember it,
and he’s harder than virtually any other contemporary artist to go back and
review since he’s managed to keep pretty much all of his material off of
streaming. So I had to settle for a live recording from some stadium show on
YouTube. It’s a pretty standard-issue country-pop number reminiscent of Billy
Joel, bringing up some messy emotion in an era where that was getting
unfashionable, not bad but I wouldn’t buy a box set just to hear it again.
I’m
still not sure who Rascal Flatts was taking their cues from; they were
confoundingly popular, kind of synonymous with mid-oughts radio country, but
I’m not sure who they were trying to sound like. Maybe some arena-friendly
soft-rockers like Chicago or Journey, filtered through a bit of Garth Brooks and
some anodyne late-‘80s easy listening? Was lead singer Gary LeVox just a
botoxed Collin Raye in a before-its-time Guy Fieri wig taking a second run at
stardom? It’s impossible to say, but it was all over the place back then and
they were one of the main reasons I tuned out of mainstream country. “Take Me
There” is a pretty good idea for a song, and to its credit it treats a female
object of affection like a three-dimensional person with wants and needs and
backstory instead of just some country gal in cutoffs (bro country was right
around the corner). But it’s still tough for me to listen to even if easy
listening was the overriding influence on it. All of their stuff sounds
overcooked and screechy to me and its popularity will forever mystify me.
Brad
Paisley hit kind of a sour note with “Online,” another of his stabs at clever
wordplay. It’s sort of funny I guess, with lots of lyrical detail and some
amusing rhymes in the portrait of a lonely nerd posing as an adventurous stud
on the internet, getting the closest thing to action he could ever hope for via
chatrooms and MySpace (good night does this song date itself). Maybe
getting Seinfeld alum Jason Alexander to star in the video was worth the
effort, but once you get through your first chuckle it kind of reeks of a
good-looking wealthy guitar jock punching down. It’s not hard to imagine Weird
Al Yankovic doing almost this exact song but with more of a “laughing with”
vibe. Paisley’s generally known to be a nice dude and much of his material
speaks to empathy and humility; guess anyone can have an off day. Meanwhile Toby
Keith, who’d gone from star to superstar around 2001 largely due to some
saber-rattling patriotic anthems followed by a bunch of relatively apolitical
swagger, decided to musically fine-tune his own outsized image a bit with “Love
Me if You Can.” A humble, measured take on his own personal and political
convictions without getting too terribly deep about it, it does show some
appealing self-awareness but it also bears a whiff of saying “sorry you feel
that way” instead of just “I’m sorry.” It’s an interesting song, especially in
light of his public persona, but aside from maybe Natalie Maines I don’t know
who he thought he owed an apology to at this point anyway.
Kenny
Chesney went big, soft, and wistful on “Don’t Blink,” weaving life lessons into
the story of an old man in a TV news feature getting to wax philosophical on
his 102nd birthday. There’s a couple of nice lines in there but
maybe it’s emblematic of a genre (maybe a whole world? how deep do we wanna
take this?) that was experiencing emotions on a screen, at a distance, safely
secondhand. The best artists of other eras sounded like they were right down in
the mud with you or whoever else might be suffering; some folks could still
pull that off circa 2007 but they weren’t on country radio anymore. Dierks
Bentley was (and is) an easy-to-like talent with engaging tunes like “Free and
Easy (Down the Road I Go).” It’s got some bluegrass-inspired drive to it, lots
of earthy picking and vocal warmth, it’s well worth listening to. But it
doesn’t say much about a year of #1s if that’s arguably the best of the bunch.
Carrie
Underwood belted out “So Small” like she was trying to win American Idol
again … her voice is technically awesome and not without personality, one of
those things where you admire the talent but can’t bring yourself to share the
taste. Too vague, too syrupy, entirely dependent on the performance to mine any
gold out of the lyrics. But again, maybe I just wasn’t the target demographic …
“So Small” might’ve sounded pretty deep to a kid, and kids with an interest in
country music had gained another key avatar in the mid-2000s with Taylor Swift,
whose third single “Our Song” scored her first #1. She’d burst onto the scene
the previous year with “Tim McGraw,” using the still-fairly-young titular
singer as an avatar for even-younger days of innocent romance, and this was
very much in the same vein. Older listeners (including 31-year-old 2007 me) might
have written it off as teeny-bop b.s. at the time, if we even heard it in the
first place. In time, of course, Swift would not only catch up with us but also
make “not hearing Taylor Swift songs” barely an option.
THE
TREND?
To
some extent, the trend’s right there in the titles. “Lucky Man,” “She’s
Everything,” “Never Wanted Nothing More,” “These Are My People,” “Free and
Easy” … complicated emotions and sadness were largely being shown the door at
this point. As mentioned, it felt almost conspiratorial, like the singers and
songwriters of Nashville were given some sort of corporate (if not governmental)
directive to forcefully remind everyone within earshot of just how good they
had it in the Dubya years. I don’t think it was just as simple as trying to
excise the poor-sad-bastard stigma off of country music and start fresh with
new generations of listeners, but I guess that was at least part of it too. Mainstream
country wanted the beer but not the hangover, the love but not the heartache,
the small-town pride without the restlessness or economic uncertainty. Patting
people on the back just for being Southerners or small-towners or patriots or
Christians is a pretty easy way to make friends I guess, and overall it’s usually
good to make people feel seen and like they’re part of something. It’s possible
to do these things without a cynical motive, but if someone was up to no good,
over the next few years they were just going to get more strident about it.
THE RANKING
- Moments – Emerson Drive
- It Just Comes Natural – George Strait
- Settlin’ – Sugarland
- Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go) – Dierks Bentley
- Good Directions – Billy Currington
- Wasted – Carrie Underwood
- The Last Dollar (Fly Away) – Tim McGraw
- Love Me if You Can – Toby Keith
- More Than a Memory – Garth Brooks
- She’s Everything – Brad Paisley
- Beer in Mexico – Kenny Chesney
- Ticks – Brad Paisley
- Take Me There – Rascal Flatts
- Lost in This Moment – Big & Rich
- Online – Brad Paisley
- Find Out Who Your Friends Are – Tracy Lawrence with Kenny Chesney & Tim McGraw
- Lucky Man – Montgomery Gentry
- Our Song – Taylor Swift
- So Small – Carrie Underwood
- These Are My People – Rodney Atkins
- Stand – Rascal Flatts
- Ladies Love Country Boys – Trace Adkins
- Watching You – Rodney Atkins
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