We’re
getting really close to wrap for this aspect of the writing project, tackling
the country music charts year-by-year and seeing what the #1 hits tell us about
where the genre was. And we’re now well into the era where it shook me off as a
listener, when the songs just weren’t all that relatable or enjoyable for me
anymore and there were plenty of other findable options out there for someone
who’d always love aspects and traditions of country music but couldn’t abide
the mainstream version of it any longer. We’re into the age of downloads and
streaming at this point, which would soon shake up the chart methodology again to
the extent that my format of writing these things doesn’t really work anymore.
By
2010 I was regularly finding new material through word-of-mouth from songwriter
friends, from publications like No Depression, from online outlets like
Galleywinter, from radio stations like KNBT in New Braunfels … I had no idea
that Reba McEntire was making a comeback (or even, necessarily, that she’d gone
away) but there she was kicking off 2010 with (the ironically titled) “Consider
Me Gone.” Aside from being well into middle age at this point, she was pretty
well-suited for the contemporary country music of the decade’s turn; despite
her rodeo-gal roots, she’d always been game for indulging in poppy stuff in
search of her next hit. And “Consider Me Gone” is a pretty smart piece of
mid-road pop, not all that different-sounding from the Lady Antebellum hit that
directly preceded it. I’m not crazy about it but there’s nothing grating or
snark-worthy about it, really. It is a little weird that suddenly she was just
professionally going by “Reba,” I can’t find any info on why the rebranding but
maybe the fiftysomething singer thought that going first-name-only might
present her as a towering pop-culture diva along the lines of Cher or Madonna,
using age and longevity as an asset instead of a liability. I prefer
relatability but hey, ain’t my career. And she’s aged more gracefully than
most.
Tim
McGraw was kind of getting into village-elder status himself at this point,
dabbling in acting on the side and packing the big venues whenever he toured,
and stuff like “Southern Voice” kept him in the radio mix often enough to stay
relevant. I don’t recall this one but, upon digging it up, I like it at least a
little. Basically it’s a rundown of famous and accomplished folks the American
South could proudly claim as their own, taking care to include the likes of MLK
and Rosa Parks to avoid racist misconstructions; it’s clever enough and has a
nice meaty Southern rock backing track. Jason Aldean continued his iffy hot
streak with “The Truth,” which to his credit is a pretty decent,
vaguely-traditional number with some real countrified heartache and humility to
it. It’s even slightly clever, building off the theme of telling the girl who
broke your heart she’s welcome to spread wild stories about you as long as she
doesn’t let on what a mess she made of you. Meanwhile, in Josh Turner’s musical
household, things were as cheerful and optimistic as usual with “Why Don’t We
Just Dance,” a bouncy but not quite annoyingly-chipper number about love and
affection’s power to drown out the nightmares of the outside world. Can’t say
that one hasn’t gotten more timely in the years since.
Anyway,
now we’re back to that “lifestyle country” for a while. Songs that make it a
point to emphasize and celebrate how “country” the narrator and audience are;
the “country” people in these songs are usually hard-partying beer chuggers who
also happen to be super resourceful and hardworking as well as deeply religious
and patriotic. It’s not like elements of this hadn’t been around for a long
time: Hank Jr., Charlie Daniels, Alabama … even John Denver was thanking God he
was a country boy, almost four decades prior. Billy Currington, who’d been
better than most at keeping some rootsy slow-rolling twang in his country,
ramped things up with “That’s How Country Boys Roll.” It’s a fairly friendly
tune, lacking the chest-beating aggression of the bro-country stuff that was
right around the corner, but despite the neighborly vibe it still feels
dumbed-down and pandering. “Hillbilly Bone” was right there with it, with Blake
Shelton and Trace Adkins joining forces in the name of good ol’ American
masculinity to spit lines about F-150s and honky tonks. Again, despite the
tough-guy punch of the track, it’s a pretty friendly message about how everyone’s
got a little country-ness in them that they’re welcome to embrace in the name
of a good time. Really, that’s what Nashville was banking on … why limit
yourself to the actual rednecks and rural types? Rap music didn’t become one of
the dominant cultural forces of the last half-century by only selling to the inner-city
black folks who originated it. Easton Corbin waxed sort-of-poetic about his
rustic bona-fides on “A Little More Country Than That,” strongly implying that
his country-ness was the source of his reliability and sincerity as a partner,
because it’s just as much a love song as it is a lifestyle song. Corbin was a
smooth, confident singer, landing #1 with his first and second singles, although
he’s struggled to maintain a place at the mainstream-country table since then.
Carrie
Underwood remained a pretty sure bet, shifting gears back to wholesome for
“Temporary Home.” A winsome, vaguely Disney-ish ballad about the impermanence
of hardship – a foster child, a struggling young mother, and a death’s-door senior
get a verse apiece – it does have a certain sweetness to it if you’re in the
right mood. It can also seem cloying and unrealistic if you’re not feeling it,
but I don’t want to try to talk anyone out of singing songs of hope and
reassurance so I’ll just file this one under “not my cup of tea, but
admirable.” Meanwhile, the Zac Brown Band seemed like they were trying to be
everyone’s cup; “Highway 20 Ride” has a breezy acoustic country-pop charm that
lands somewhere between James Taylor and early Eagles. Add that on to the
echoes of Alabama and Jimmy Buffett they were going for on their previous #1s,
plus their growing reputation as a jam-friendly live act, and they were
starting to seem like they were gunning for cross-genre,
all-things-to-all-people appeal. Brown would eventually dabble in strains of
pop and even EDM and collaborate with rock heavyweights like Dave Grohl and
Chris Cornell, which was probably fun in the moment but eventually seemed to
just leave him spread too thin. That being said, the “Highway 20 Ride”
throughline of a divorced dad’s heartache feels believable and stops shy of
sappy; it’s one of the better songs of a year that’s shaping up to not be so
great.
Lady
Antebellum swung back in with “American Honey,” which feels pretty can’t-miss
right from the title. Patriotic, sweet, and wholesome? Folks were buying that
in 2010. It’s not gonna hurt anyone’s ears even if it’s not your sort of thing,
it’s even ambitious enough to work in a little lyrical ambiguity. Seems like
the narrator isn’t so much pushing wholesomeness in your face (a la “All
American Girl”) as she is lamenting the gradual wearing away of it due to the
demands of adulthood. A big, sunny country-pop song with a bitter edge to it. The
reliably anonymous Joe Nichols was less ambitious on “Gimmie That Girl,” an
uptempo ass-kissy number about how he prefers his wife in her old blue jeans
with a ponytail and no makeup, even if he conveniently waited until she was
dressed to the nines for a fancy date somewhere to tell her this. Maybe she’s
just really bad at doing her makeup; either way, seems like kind of a dick move
even though the song’s going for sweet unconditional love or something. At
least Chris Young in “The Black Dress Song” took his wife out to the fancy
dinner before shifting gears …
Speaking
of, newcomer Young was back on top with “The Man I Want to Be,” a solid enough
midtempo tune about a man reaching out to God to help shuck his lesser
instincts and bring his best self to the forefront. I don’t recall it from back
then, but it’s pretty good; there was a lot of overlap between the sounds and
approaches of mainstream country and contemporary Christian pop back then, and
this one definitely incorporated a touch of the latter without compromising
Young’s resonant twang. Miranda Lambert was similarly soul-searching on “The
House That Built Me,” a ruminative number about a woman visiting her childhood
home – now occupied by strangers – in hopes of reconnection to a more grounded,
loving place in her life. It’s a pretty great trick as a song, the intimacy of
a you-are-there narrative with enough ambiguity around the edges to let you put
yourself in the narrator’s emotional place. We don’t know if the beloved
parents mentioned are deceased or just living elsewhere now, we don’t know if the
singer’s emotional exhaustion is from breakup or grief or star-specific stress
and disillusionment, so we can fill in our own broken pieces. And even though
this is the first time we’ve had a chance to discuss Lambert here – her
official first #1 – by 2010 she was already about a half-decade into being a
real-deal star. She’d only occasionally cracked the top ten since her 2005
major-label debut (after a brief stint in the bar-band circuit of her native
Texas and a career-boosting season on Nashville Star) but she’d loomed
fairly large in discussions of where modern mainstream country might be going.
Her approach leaned feistier, rootsier, and more aggressive than any of her
female contemporaries (and just about all of the males). Comparisons to the
likes of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton (not to mention alt-country firebrands
like Steve Earle) might’ve seemed a little premature but Lambert was definitely
standing out from the crowd, and the lack of go-along-to-get-along might’ve
kept memorable numbers like “Kerosene” and “Gunpowder & Lead” from climbing
all the way up. But between her snowballing fame, cred, and the indelibility of
the song itself, “House That Built Me” finally couldn’t be denied.
Brad
Paisley was still in his “couldn’t be denied” phase, more or less, with stuff
like “Water” stumping its way to #1 reliably enough. Good-time country singers by
this point put out summer-themed songs in summer almost as reliably as they banged
out Christmas albums in late autumn, and this was just one more on the pile.
Lots of adept guitar work and state-of-the-art production propping up lines
about lakes and beaches and wet t-shirt contests for the redneck bros and gals.
Intentionally or not, he certainly set the table for dudes like Luke Bryan,
notching his first #1 after a couple years of career growth with “Rain is a
Good Thing.” Even if the 2012 chart realignment didn’t give us a good natural
endpoint for this little writing assignment, stuff like Luke Bryan would
probably put the nails in the coffin, in terms of willingness to keep listening
and writing. A decent dude by all accounts, and a good vocalist when the song
deserves it, he threw himself so shamelessly into bottom-rung pandering numbers
that within a couple of years it sort of seemed like he’d spearheaded the
dreaded bro-country movement. Plenty of other guys had already laid the
groundwork; dudes who’d been at it for awhile now like Brad Paisley, Trace
Atkins, Kenny Chesney, other recent buy-ins like Jason Aldean and Justin Moore,
few artists of the day were totally innocent of empty country-lifestyle novelty
songs. I can’t say it isn’t catchy sometimes – I don’t remember “Rain is a Good
Thing” from its first run, so I think the only time I’ve actively listened to
it was a couple of weeks ago “researching” for this article and I could
probably still accurately sing you most of the chorus. It’s sticky. But many (if
not most) sticky things are unpleasant.
Carrie
Underwood continued to profitably sway back and forth between wholesome
balladry and arena-rock-tinged sass, with “Undo It” being unmistakably the
latter. It’ll never be my sort of thing, but I prefer it to the similar (and
much better-known) “Before He Cheats,” largely because I’m just now hearing it
instead of having it drilled into my brain every hour on the hour in my final
year or so of frequent country radio listenership. But I guess tuning out also
made me miss Jerrod Niemann and “Lover, Lover,” which – hard to believe I’m
saying this at this point – is pretty damn delightful. I don’t mean to blow too
much smoke up Niemann’s ass; he seems like a good dude, but most of his stuff
is more standard-issue 2010’s country and not my thing. “Lover, Lover” was a
retitled cover of a song called “You Don’t Treat Me No Good” by a Chicago
folk-rock group called Sonia Dada; their version was an obscurity in the US but
a fluke #1 pop hit in Australia in 1992. The original totally smokes and
Niemann sticks closely to it, apparently recording all of the layered harmony
vocals himself, even hitting the bass notes after a generous helping of vocal
chord-altering whiskey. It’s playful, soulful, bouncy and relatable, grounded
by a simple but fetching acoustic guitar hook. Nothing all that country about
it, but given what the default sound of 2010s country was turning into, it’s
hard to blame the artists for looking elsewhere for material.
The
Zac Brown Band sounded both dreamy and earthy on “Free,” one of those
Eagles-ish songs that is ironically precision-tooled to sound all loose and
mellow and carefree, just like its thinly-sketched lyrical study of a couple of
blissful young lovers hopping town to town in their camper van on some sort of
permanent vacation. There’s a repetitive “we don’t have a lot of money!” refrain
thrown in towards the end in case the listener decided the happy couple were a
couple of trust-fund hippies and f’ing hated them for it. It’s pretty good if
you don’t think about it too hard. I can’t extend the same praise to Blake
Shelton’s “All About Tonight,” where he showed signs of getting sucked into the
bro-country vortex on a vapid party tune with just enough guitar crunch to it
that the press releases probably called it a “roadhouse rocker” or some similar
cliché. Billy Currington, for his part, swung back in and tried to lean more on
the country half of bro-country with “Pretty Good at Drinking Beer,” an
ambling honky-tonker about some regular lazy dude who sounds even more useless
than the galivanting lovebirds in “Free” but at least he admits it. Tellingly,
the chorus name-checks Bud Light, and it’s a Bud Light kind of song: not
actively unpleasant and obviously popular, but if you looked even a little bit
closer there’s tastier, heartier options out there.
History
will probably see bro-country as mainstream Nashville’s unfortunate default
setting for the era, but other stuff was still breaking through, just like
Ronnie Milsap types were still going strong alongside the New Traditionalist
stuff of George Strait, Ricky Skaggs, etc. about three decades prior. Acts that
could’ve also easily been adult-contemporary pop like Lady Antebellum were
doing well, smooth and earnest on barely-remembered tracks like “Our Kind of
Love” that I guess did fine at the time. Kenny Chesney – an old-guard superstar
at this point – had long had at least a whiff of bro-country to him (“She
Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” might be partially responsible for it) but really, he
sounded more invested when in sincere-ballad mode. “The Boys of Fall” leans
into that but tries to also incorporate a big dose of downhome machismo,
getting all oddly wistful about memories of high school football camaraderie. On
one hand, I think putting out seasonally appropriate songs about slices of
American life like this is sort of brilliant; cynical maybe, but I have a hard
time begrudging singers and songwriters trying to figure out a way to make
money in a business where it’s increasingly hard to do so. On the other, even
though apparently the real-life Chesney actually played high school sports, on
record his ex-jock persona isn’t nearly as convincing as his beach-dude one. It’s
an ok-enough tune that probably would’ve been better with a Trace Adkins or Toby
Keith at QB.
Josh
Turner split the difference between the encroaching bro-country and his usual
wholesomeness with “All Over Me,” down by the river partying heartily but, it
sounds like, privately and monogamously. If you’re being generous, it sounds a
little like a modern take on The Band, with tumbling acoustic picking but over
a too-processed beat with too-obvious lyrics. Easton Corbin’s “Roll With It” is
thematically the same song, pretty much, just taking more cues from late-era
George Strait than any era of Levon Helm & co. Both of these kind of missed
their window as summer songs. Darius Rucker’s “Come Back Song” is a shade more
timeless, one of those sad songs that’s spry and cheery in execution, mandolin
and guitar licks dancing around a nimble bassline while Rucker makes a soulful meal
out of the straightforward but admirably non-lousy lyrics. This would’ve
sounded fine on a Hootie & the Blowfish album, and unlike most people I
mean that as a compliment.
Zac
Brown Band’s “As She’s Walking Away” was pretty nifty too, lest I start coming
off like a big grouch about the whole damn era. For one, it’s a duet with Alan
Jackson, which is as good a way as any to get on my good side. It goes from a
harmony-heavy, melodically complex intro reminiscent of Crosby, Stills &
Nash or something to a breezy, fiddle-driven country shuffle that occasionally
circles back to the headier charms it kicked off with. In other words, the ZBB
meets Jackson at least halfway and he gets to stretch out a little
stylistically too (and, to his credit, is totally up to it). Brad Paisley,
meanwhile, stuck to his own tricks of family-friendly dad-country with
“Anything Like Me,” a tenderly-delivered fatherhood song that innovatively
starts with a verse about a doctor pointing out a penis on a sonogram and from
there just sort of ambles into the usual suburban wholesomeness.
There
was still room for something sublime here and there. The Band Perry hadn’t been
around long, a trio of siblings from Mississippi with big sister Kimberly Perry
taking the lead on vocals and songwriting. “If I Die Young” was only their
second single but it was a knockout then and holds up nicely today, Perry’s
honey-sweet twang taking some of the sting out of frank but optimistic lyrics
about lives snuffed out too soon. She kind of split the difference between
Taylor Swift’s confessional-kid appeal and Carrie Underwood’s big-voiced sheen
on a song that was arguably better than anything the other two had put out yet
at that point, so you’d think she and/or the band would’ve been enduringly
huge. It’s hard to say if country radio’s off-and-on antipathy to female
artists is the only reason it didn’t quite work out that way … competition was
stiff, tastes were changing, public attention spans by this point were
internet-short. By mid-decade the band was trying to move towards a pop career,
out of either desperation or ambition, which didn’t work as well as Swift’s
similar transition. Various short-lived career moves and hiatuses ensued, and
as of 2023 Kimberly is working on a solo career, voice and talents seemingly
intact but just not as many people listening. Here’s hoping it picks up steam.
Good
as “If I Die Young” was, modern mainstream country just couldn’t help itself,
and we ended up with Rascal Flatts and “Why Wait” closing out the year, one of
their typical overstuffed pop-rock concoctions that sounded about as country as
a Prius and hasn’t held up half as well to mileage. A bouncy, sugary anthem
about impulsively eloping, I didn’t hear it back then and don’t intend to
again. Usually even when I don’t like something – be it music, movies,
politics, etc. – I can at least imagine the appeal for the audience that does
like it. With these guys, I’m forever stumped. On to 2011 …
THE
TREND?
In
decades past – either in the moment or retroactively as a half-assed country
music historian – I’d wish the pop-oriented interlopers would go away or at
least be de-emphasized in deference to the true believers trying to make real
country music with at least some note of tradition. A year like 2010 makes you
glad you didn’t get your wish, because for the most part it’s the artists with
at least one foot in the pop-rock-etc. worlds that are putting out the smarter,
better-crafted, and more emotionally authentic-feeling material than nearly all
of the self-professed country boys who are coming off hacky and opportunistic. Within
a few years, Zac Brown & co. and The Band Perry would be aggressively
branching out of the country scene, and Miranda Lambert would be sort of her
own thing without notable country radio support, more analogous to alt-country
heavyweights than the Nashville mainstream. So the bro-country types stuck
around and multiplied to fill the gaps left by folks who didn’t fit the mold
and/or figured it was probably best not to be associated with what modern
country music was turning into. Honestly, despite my gripes I don’t mind the
top half or so of that ranking down there. But most of those names weren’t long
for the charts and much of the bottom half was ascendant.
THE RANKING
- The House That Built Me – Miranda Lambert
- If I Die Young – The Band Perry
- Lover, Lover – Jerrod Niemann
- As She’s Walking Away – Zac Brown Band with Alan Jackson
- Highway 20 Ride – Zac Brown Band
- Come Back Song – Darius Rucker
- Southern Voice – Tim McGraw
- The Man I Want to Be – Chris Young
- The Truth – Jason Aldean
- Why Don’t We Just Dance – Josh Turner
- Free – Zac Brown Band
- Temporary Home – Carrie Underwood
- American Honey – Lady Antebellum
- Pretty Good at Drinking Beer – Billy Currington
- The Boys of Fall – Kenny Chesney
- Undo It – Carrie Underwood
- All Over Me – Josh Turner
- Anything Like Me – Brad Paisley
- Water – Brad Paisley
- Our Kind of Love – Lady Antebellum
- Roll With It – Easton Corbin
- Consider Me Gone - Reba
- That’s How Country Boys Roll – Billy Currington
- Hillbilly Bone – Blake Shelton feat. Trace Adkins
- A Little More Country Than That – Easton Corbin
- All About Tonight – Blake Shelton
- Rain is a Good Thing – Luke Bryan
- Gimmie That Girl – Joe Nichols
Teddy Swims is getting some traction nowadays as an unconventional pop singer, with his current single "Lose Control" rocking the higher reaches of the Top 40 as I write this. He's a scruffy, unglamorous dude from Georgia who can belt 'em out like Chris Stapleton but with more pop and R&B in his bloodstream. He's a terrific singer, I don't know if Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me" was the most natural place for that voice to land but he's characteristically committed to it and finds some nice shades in this performance.
