1984 - darlin' I've wasted a lot of years, without seein' the real you ...

1983 was pretty heavy on the gems. Check out the top ten or so on that ranking again. Diverse styles, artists from different eras, great songwriters represented … hard not to dig that. And it was (and is) hard not to dig George Strait, scoring the first #1 of 1984 with his evergreen lament “You Look So Good in Love.” Relatable to the guys, irresistible to the gals. That little recitation on the third verse (“darlin’ I’ve wasted a lot of years, without seeing the real you…”) is icing on the ¾ time cake. Great way to kick off a year. TG Sheppard was on board too, outdoing himself with the groovier-than-usual love ballad “Slow Burn.” He didn’t always have the best taste in material, to these ears, but this one was a winner.  

John Conlee kept it downbeat too, with the devoted but complex “In My Eyes.” Talk about relatable … he could settle for amiable ditties sometimes, but even by country music standards he was an ace at plumbing some of the darker worries and fears of the common folk. Famously, Conlee was a mortician before he caught on as a country star, and never let his license expire. Guess it was good practice for staring uncomfortable realities in the face. Crystal Gayle’s swooping, dramatic “The Sound of Goodbye” wasn’t quite as affecting but it’s sincere enough in its romantic paranoia.

“Show Her” caught Ronnie Milsap in a tender mood, a bit more spare in spots than usual, which was a nice fit for him. And granted this is largely a matter of taste, but Merle Haggard out-tendered him by a mile on a hit cover of Lefty Frizzell’s sublime “That’s the Way Love Goes” that made the absolute most of his barrel-aged, time-deepened twang. Hag and whoever he was working with deserve retroactive congrats for figuring out how to frame a familiar and decidedly old-school voice in contemporary production without making it sound out of place. 

Ricky Skaggs was blending timeless and contemporary pretty damn well too. He obviously loved bluegrass and drew deeply from it but wasn’t all fuddy-duddy about it … songs like “Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown” met the production-standard demands of country radio, all crisp and shiny and percussive, while still weaving in the high twangy harmonies and acoustic chug Skaggs just wouldn’t be Skaggs without. Plus it was cool to see him tackling a bit darker of a theme. Don Williams stepped farther out on a limb than usual with “Stay Young,” a pretty rich sentiment coming from a guy who always sounded like he was born middle-aged. There’s even kind of a reggae vibe to it! Don’t know how the hell he beat the Bellamy Brothers to this one, but it’s a beauty and a nice change-up in the DW catalog.

And then you get Exile. Or sort of, anyway. A heavily reshuffled lineup of the pop band that had the big 1978 disco-ish hit “Kiss You All Over,” they were retooled by Epic Records as a country-pop band, or at least a country-pop brand. There have been about two dozen members of Exile through the years; it’s sort of like Menudo for middle-aged white guys. “Woke Up in Love” is entirely emblematic of the sort of snappy, weightless drivel they’d build the second act of their career upon. “Going, Going, Gone” by Lee Greenwood is no stone-country masterpiece, but he sounded like vintage Buck Owens by comparison. The durable old-school Statler Brothers (who could’ve taught Exile a thing or two about keeping a lineup together) swung back in with “Elizabeth,” which sounded like a Civil War folk ballad compared to all the slick contempo-pop dabblers they somehow snuck in between. Late-phase Statler Brothers could sound pretty stodgy but also somehow reassuring, the audio equivalent of a ceramic bowl of Wurther’s Originals and a Matlock rerun playing in the background at your grandparents’ house. 

Things jackknifed abruptly into Alabama’s story-song country-pop sort-of-classic “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler).” I’m biased because this is easily one of the most-remembered, most-quoted songs of my childhood even though in retrospect I misunderstood one of the central plot points. Despite growing up in a Christian (if non-denominational) home, I’d never heard God referred to as “the man upstairs” as a child, so in that dramatic bridge where the family of the missing trucker rejoices that “the man upstairs was listenin’/when Mama asked him to bring Daddy home…” I thought they lived in an apartment and the mortal man who literally lived upstairs went above and beyond his neighborly duties and went and tracked down the beloved father and husband, dragging him out of the wrecked rig or snowbank or whatever and driving him back to his despairing family. I also thought they were singing “roll on mama like the Eskimos do” instead of “like I asked you to do.” Anyway, good song. As Janie Fricke said next, “Let’s Stop Talkin’ About It” (that one’s just ok).

Earl Thomas Conley’s “Don’t Make it Easy For Me” was his usual default sincere-midtempo-relationship-song sort of thing, good but not his best. The family act The Kendalls scored their third and last #1 hit with “Thank God For the Radio,” perhaps shrewdly aware that DJs love spinning songs that specifically kiss a little radio ass (see also: “BJ the DJ” by Stonewall Jackson). Chart veteran Johnny Lee brought fellow songwriter Lane Brody in for a duet on a rewrite of the mid-19^th-century (how’s that for old school?) anthem “The Yellow Rose of Texas” renamed simply “The Yellow Rose,” engineered to be the theme song of a primetime soap starring Cybill Shepherd called The Yellow Rose. Sounds contrived, and I guess it is, but as rewrites go it’s pretty solid and their voices blend nicely. Writing this is the first I’ve heard of the TV show, but as many a songwriter has said about a shitty relationship or rough night: “at least we got a song out of it!”

George Strait went digging back multiple decades too, unearthing the old ‘20s jazz standard “Right or Wrong” and doing his hero Bob Wills (almost certainly the version Strait was familiar with) proud in the process. Given the song’s vintage, it’s pretty cool how out-of-place it didn’t sound. The Oak Ridge Boys “I Guess It Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes” was relatively hot off the presses, and to these ears it’s one of their best, richly and tastefully produced to get some pretty sweet dynamics out of their layered vocal harmonies and Joe Bonsall’s emotive tenor lead.

Then it was time for some high kitsch. Willie Nelson high. Nelson had spun elegant gold covering Townes Van Zandt with his buddy Merle Haggard the previous year, and soon enough he’d capture an alchemic mystique with soul legend Ray Charles on a similarly poetic number. But 1984 was the year he joined forces with cartoonishly suave international singing sensation Julio Iglesias to herald conquests past with “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” This could’ve gotten smarmy really easily – two aging troubadours waxing about notches on their presumably expensive bedposts – but honestly it was pretty endearing. The contrast between the luxuriously dapper Spanish pop icon and the eternally scruffy bandana-clad country warhorse was immediately amusing, and the lyrics are so damn devotional considering the subject matter that everybody comes out of this looking pretty good. It’s no “Seven Spanish Angels,” but what the hell.

John Conlee humbly narrowed it down to one gal for the sweet grow-old-together ballad “As Long as I’m Rockin’ With You.” Ricky Skaggs dug into honky-tonk instead of bluegrass for a change, unearthing an old Mel Tillis/Webb Pierce collaboration with “Honey (Open That Door),” a catchy little ramblin’-gamblin’ number that sounded considerably more rakish in Pierce’s hands (check it out sometime!) but was well worth another run. Merle Haggard kept his middle-aged baritone warble in fine shape on “Someday When Things Are Good.” Then it was time for the biggest country-chart #1 debut since Julio Iglesias: the erstwhile Eddy Raven clocked in with “I Got Mexico,” a Jimmy Buffett-ish rebound tune about healing a heartache down on a Mexican seacoast somewhere. The underrated Raven (who also co-wrote the tune) was good at wringing a bit of extra emotion out of songs that sound a bit fluffy on the surface, and this was no exception.

Things got pretty direct for a bit, with Alabama scoring another #1 with the warm soft-rock cheese of “When We Make Love.” Vern Gosdin, whose well-weathered gift of a voice had been knocking around the charts for a decade at this point, finally scored his first #1 with the galloping, confident “I Can Tell by the Way You Dance (You’re Gonna Love Me Tonight).” I’m not sure how this one slipped past Conway Twitty, but it was a well-deserved shot in the arm for a lifer who’d eventually be venerated as one of the great vocalists of his day (you might’ve heard him nicknamed “The Voice” at some point). His very best work was maybe too morose to get all the way to #1, but he was canny enough to shift gears as needed.

Speaking of Conway Twitty, the slightly-retro groove of “Somebody’s Needin’ Somebody” scored him his 31^st #1. I’d like to think Twitty was easily one of the guys getting first picks from the Nashville songwriter mill, confident in his ability to elevate them even further through performance, and getting richly rewarded along the way because this one’s another gem. Then as now, I’m less high on Exile but “I Don’t Want to Be a Memory” is pleasant enough, in a background-y sort of way. Anne Murray could do pleasant in her sleep, and “Just Another Woman in Love” is one of her best, a vulnerable yet cheery paean to full-grown romance. Earl Thomas Conley kept the mid-tempo warmth going with the self-penned “Angel in Disguise.” It might not be an all-timer, but I’d like to note that in the songs he wrote and chose, Conley had an uncanny knack for making the objects of his affection sound like fleshed-out characters as opposed to the shallow hot-country-girl sketches mainstream male country music tends to hand out to us nowadays.   

Next up was probably the year’s biggest #1 debut, another new artist trying to more or less steer country music back into a more traditional, organic direction: the Judds had a big breakthrough with the warmly memorable “Mama He’s Crazy.” Wynonna Judd’s dreamy, devoted lead vocal pretty much instantly put her in the top tier of contemporary female vocalists, with the durably foxy Naomi Judd lending motherly harmonies and a big dose of middle-aged glamour that had always been more than welcome in country music (and is unfortunately sort of lost nowadays, at least on the upper reaches of the chart).

Undeterred by the newbies, the old guard was successfully sticking to their guns. Don Williams got all warm and wise and low-key on us again with “That’s the Thing About Love.” Ronnie Milsap got all big and slick and emotive on us with “Still Losing You.” Next up was a band that took a twistier path than most to their first #1: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. They’d been around since the mid-‘60s (with no less a future classic-rock titan as Jackson Browne briefly taking part), founded in California during a fertile time for local earthy country-rock pioneers. They took the country side even more seriously than some, releasing the landmark 1972 album Will The Circle Be Unbroken in collaboration with folk and country titans like Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter and Merle Travis. Along the way they became the first American band permitted to tour the Soviet Union, backed up Steve Martin’s comedic “King Tut” song on Saturday Night Live, had a pop hit with a Jerry Jeff Walker tune (“Mr. Bojangles”) and retooled themselves as just The Dirt Band for a rejuvenated run at the pop charts. When that fizzled, they were a much more obvious fit than, say, Exile for a run at mainstream country music and for a while were welcomed with open arms in a genre that most of their longtime fans had probably gravitated towards anyway. They wisely hit up Rodney Crowell for some material and hit the first #1 of an already-long career with the gorgeously detailed “Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream).” I was a big fan of their greatest hits cassette as a child so maybe I’m retroactively overestimating how huge they were, but this tune was the beginning of one of the more successful music-biz redirections of the pre-Taylor Swift era.

No point in redirecting George Strait; he was as reliably tasteful and relatable as always on the fiddle-and-steel waltz of “Let’s Fall to Pieces Together,” another one of those songs that’s so sweet in the delivery that it gives barroom hookups a good name. Dolly Parton was unenviably saddled with making Sylvester Stallone look credible as a country star wannabe in Rhinestone (it’ll always be hard to say how much of the movie’s comedy was intentional) but in the meantime she managed to squeeze a #1 hit out of it with the sweet, yodeling ramble of “Tennessee Homesick Blues.” And then, right on the heels of this nice run of legends (both contemporary and in-the-making) you’ve got the year’s biggest fluke with Jim Glaser and “You’re Gettin’ to Me Again” landing at #1. The brother of ‘70s “outlaw country” cohort Tompall Glaser, Jim had been a bit of an under-the-radar success as a songwriter and backup vocalist since the ‘60s. He’d popped up in the lower reaches of the Top 100 over a dozen times before, but for some reason, the weightless country-pop of “You’re Gettin’ to Me Again” got the rocket strapped to it.  Glaser was pushing 50 by this point; he’d been a part of some much better songs over a long and obscure career but somehow this one grabbed the brass ring and none of his future work got particularly close. He even won Best New Male Vocalist at the 1984 Academy of Country Music Awards (also up for it: four other guys you’ve never heard of). Long as we’re getting obscure here, some lady named Gus Hardin won Best New Female Vocalist that year, but has the more interesting footnote of beating future stars Amy Grant, Lorrie Morgan, and Kathy Mattea. So someone in the biz was looking out for Jim Glaser, but I guess they got distracted in pretty short order.

Merle Haggard continued to be a legend still riding his peak; he could knock out sly little hard-country nuggets like “Let’s Chase Each Other Around the Room” in his sleep and watch ‘em glide right up the charts, cutting through the upstarts and wannabes like a steel guitar lick through an ‘80s sound mix. Crystal Gayle was on a roll too, with the lovelorn “Turning Away” taking over at #1 … nice tune, although I don’t remember it at all somehow. The Oak Ridge Boys drew from their gospel roots again with the bighearted call-and-response of “Everyday” serving up some counterweight to the usual cheatin’/drinkin’/heartbreakin’ vibe. Ricky Skaggs was doing some roots-diggin’ himself (when was he not?), masterfully covering Bill Monroe’s hot-picking hoedown “Uncle Pen” and getting rewarded with a #1. Conway Twitty’s warm, really-familiar-by-now vocal dynamics brought out the best in a sort of slight tune with “I Don’t Know a Thing About Love (The Moon Song).” Lots of real-deal pros making easy-to-like and sort-of-surprisingly diverse music for the countrified masses. Alabama hit another home run (at least chart-wise … the song’s memorable but nothing groundbreaking) with the hoedown-rock mashup of “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band,” which I’m sure was news to ZZ Top.

Willie Nelson continued to be admirably restless in his search for material, landing this time on Steve Goodman’s passenger-train folk epic “City of New Orleans” and delivering it like it belonged to his warm, distinctive twang all along. Following up was the less-legendary but (at least at the time) comparably-famous John Schneider with his first #1, the hard-country kiss-off of “I’ve Been Around Enough to Know.” Schneider was mostly known as one of the stars of the red-hot, red-necked, kid-friendly primetime TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, which of course had huge demographic overlap with the country radio audience; putting Schneider’s name (or, perhaps even more can’t-miss, picture) on pretty much any tossed-off country single guaranteed at least moderate success. It didn’t have to be a good song, but to these ears it was, and it wouldn’t be his last run at the top. Exile’s annoyingly chipper “Give Me One More Chance” somehow took over, a harbinger of a string of forgettable tunes to round out the year. Johnny Lee’s “You Could’ve Heard a Heart Break,” Janie Fricke’s “Your Heart’s Not in It,” and Earl Thomas Conley’s “Chance of Lovin’ You” were all decent tunes that pretty much evaporated as soon as the DJ changed records. Anne Murray’s duet with folk-pop dude Dave Loggins, “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” was more actively annoying in that drippy power-ballad-without-the-power way; usually Murray could do pillowy-soft and still stop short of cloying, but perhaps Loggins dragged her across the saccharine Rubicon. The Judds’ “Why Not Me” wasn’t necessarily evergreen, but after five relative duds in a row it felt like a breath of fresh countrified air. Which is good, because we might as well get used to them.                

THE TREND?

I don’t want to just dismissively wave my hand at a whole year’s worth of songs, but does anybody else sense a bit of the mid-decade doldrums setting in? Even looking at the Top 10 or 15 there in my entirely-scientific ranking, there’s a lot of stuff I’m always glad to listen to but there’s also a lot of cover songs, some things our Yankee friends might call schmaltz or kitsch, some solid songs by worthy artists who’ve done better work elsewhere, etc. It’s not like Nashville abruptly turned into some risible crap factory in December 1983, it’s just that the wheat-to-chaff ratio seems to have gone the wrong direction.  If I were a bigger fan of The Judds maybe their introduction to the #1s club would be reason enough to chalk this up as a banner year. But as it is, I’m seeing a dip buoyed by a few bright spots, an encroaching blandness despite (or sometimes because of?) some newer faces in the mix.        

THE RANKING 

1. You Look So Good in Love – George Strait
2. City of New Orleans – Willie Nelson
3. That’s the Way Love Goes – Merle Haggard
4. Let’s Fall to Pieces Together – George Strait
5. Stay Young – Don Williams
6. Right or Wrong – George Strait
7. I Can Tell by the Way You Dance (You’re Gonna Love Me Tonight) – Vern Gosdin
8. I Guess it Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes – The Oak Ridge Boys
9. Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler) – Alabama
10. To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before – Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias
11. Long Hard Road (Sharecropper’s Dream) – The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
12. Uncle Pen – Ricky Skaggs
13. Somebody’s Needin’ Somebody – Conway Twitty
14. Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown – Ricky Skaggs
15. Tennessee Homesick Blues – Dolly Parton
16. The Yellow Rose – Johnny Lee & Lane Brody
17. I Got Mexico – Eddy Raven
18. If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band) - Alabama
19. Honey (Open That Door) – Ricky Skaggs
20. I Don’t Know a Thing About Love (The Moon Song) – Conway Twitty
21. As Long as I’m Rockin’ With You – John Conlee
22. Someday When Things Are Good – Merle Haggard
23. Mama He’s Crazy – The Judds
24. That’s the Thing About Love – Don Williams
25. Just Another Woman in Love – Anne Murray
26. I’ve Been Around Enough to Know – John Schneider
27. Angel in Disguise – Earl Thomas Conley
28. When We Make Love - Alabama
29. In My Eyes – John Conlee
30. Slow Burn – TG Sheppard
31. Why Not Me – The Judds
32. Your Heart’s Not in It – Janie Fricke
33. Let’s Chase Each Other Around the Room – Merle Haggard
34. Don’t Make it Easy For Me – Earl Thomas Conley
35. The Sound of Goodbye – Crystal Gayle
36. Elizabeth – The Statler Brothers
37. Turning Away – Crystal Gayle
38. The Chance of Lovin’ You – Earl Thomas Conley
39. Thank God For the Radio – The Kendalls
40. Everyday – The Oak Ridge Boys
41. I Don’t Want to Be a Memory - Exile
42. Let’s Stop Talkin’ About It – Janie Fricke
43. Still Losing You – Ronnie Milsap
44. You Could’ve Heard a Heart Break – Johnny Lee
45. Show Her – Ronnie Milsap
46. Give Me One More Chance - Exile
47. You’re Gettin’ To Me Again – Jim Glaser
48. Nobody Loves Me Like You – Anne Murray & Dave Loggins
49. Going, Going, Gone – Lee Greenwood
50. Woke Up in Love - Exile

DOWN THE ROAD ...

I guess this wasn't a huge year for songs that'd eventually be prominently covered. "City of New Orleans" and "That's the Way Love Goes" were covers anyway, and George Strait's own staying power on the country charts made him an unlikely subject for revival, and plus yeah some of the other stuff's pretty blah. But I'm happy to say a worthy update of "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" exists, charismatically delivered by Raul Malo (perhaps best known as frontman of The Mavericks) and grizzled singer-songwriter Jamey Johnson. Both guys sort of helped pave the way for the current Americana/indie-country boom, each getting just enough Nashville success to attain some relevance en route to following their own muses. They aren't as humorously contrasted as Willie & Julio were once upon a time, although Malo's Latin smoothness and Johnson's outlaw bonafides echo the originators enough to be clever. Sure, they don't bear the same buzz of international-superstar wattage, but damn if they aren't really, really good singers. 

1983 - breath as hard as kerosene ...

1983 is one of those years like we’ve talked about before, where it feels like the industry just looked at the previous year and said yeah, that was pretty good, let’s just have another round of that. Similar balance of older artists vs newer, tradition vs. crossover, substance vs. fluff. As with many second helpings, it’s not quite as satisfying as the first. But if you skipped it entirely, you’d be missing some good stuff.

John Anderson’s excellent “Wild and Blue” carried over from 1982 with one of those increasingly rare two-week runs at the top before handing over to someone who’d be even more consequential, at least commercially: Reba McEntire. We’re very much in soundtrack-to-my-childhood territory here and honestly I don’t remember Reba being a big deal until a few years later, but she was scoring intermittently before she became the powerhouse female vocalist of her era. “Can’t Even Get the Blues” seems like a bit of a trifle, as is often the case when somebody who specializes in romantic ballads decides they need to put out something upbeat now and then just to change it up. For all her talents, “bluesy” was never a great fit.

“Going Where the Lonely Go,” meanwhile, was one hell of a mid-career triumph for Merle Haggard. Sure, staying relevant was a victory in itself, although the country music industry was generally kinder than most to the middle-agers. But the self-penned tune showed the longtime star never lost his common touch for down-to-earth heartache, and his voice was aging like a fine bourbon. It’s probably the earliest example I can remember of when I decided something was my favorite song.  I guess at around seven years old I was already into road-weary melancholy. That hasn’t changed much.

Emmylou Harris had broken through as a very early example of “alt-country” when she was Gram Parsons’ righthand gal, and she’d drift back there soon enough, but 1983 was well within the sweet spot when she could cover Conway Twitty covering Floyd Cramer on “(Lost His Love) On Our Last Date” and ride it to #1. Mickey Gilley was still on his kind-of-puzzling but undeniable roll with “Talk to Me,” an old Little Willie John chestnut smoothed out for the country-pop charts. Ronnie Milsap was in his imperial phase as well, with “Inside” tackling a complicated, Beatles-meet-James-Taylor sort of melody that’s technically impressive but a bit cold when it’s all said and done. Another very 1983 sort of artist, Crystal Gayle, snagged the next #1 with a cover of Rodney Crowell’s “Til I Gain Control Again.” Most longtime country fans are familiar with this longing beauty of a song, and I don’t know about the rest of them but I always associated it with Crowell himself or the timeless versions by Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris. I wasn’t aware until “researching” this (i.e., driving around listening to music) that Gayle had a version, much less a #1 hit version, but anyhow it’s lovely. One of the best things she ever recorded, although it’s been overshadowed by other tunes that she more or less had all to herself.

TG Sheppard and Karen Brooks’ “Faking Love” has kind of disappeared from cultural memory too, but probably more because it’s drippy lightweight pseudo-funk than any overshadowing issues. Warhorse-by-then Charley Pride scored again with a cover of George Jones decades-old hit “Why Baby Why,” which seems weird since Jones was still often on the chart right next to him.  Don Williams stuck to his mellow guns with “If Hollywood Don’t Need You (Honey I Still Do),” which might be far from his best work but didn’t stray from his usual twilit charm. Veterans continued to rule the roost as Conway Twitty scored with his impassioned take on “The Rose,” which had been a Bette Midler movie soundtrack hit a few years back. Midler didn’t exactly have a small, personality-free voice, but Twitty still masterfully made this one his own. It goes so big I’m sure it at least teeters on the edge of cheese for some listeners, but I’m still down with it.  

Ricky Skaggs’ traditionalist approach didn’t have much room for Bette Midler covers, but to me the bluegrass-informed likes of “I Wouldn’t Change You if I Could” has a whiff of cheese to it too. Skaggs could tackle emotionally messy stuff too, but sometimes the man was just too wholesome for these ears (which is maybe more of a knock on me than on him). John Anderson came barreling back to the top with what would come to be his signature hit, “Swingin’.” You could argue this one falls into the cheese category too, but it’s so damn fun and seems self-aware in its depiction of folksy young romance with all the organ riffs and horn sections you could ever ask for to put this kind of catchy trifle way over the top. And who hits the vocal balance of genial and weathered better than John Anderson? If this is cheese I’ll take two pounds.

The Bellamy Brothers’ “When I’m Away From You” was more breezy than cheesy, another welcome dose of their lighthearted romanticism that’s been kind of overshadowed by their even-bigger hits. “We’ve Got Tonight,” by Kenny Rogers duetting with country legend Sheena Easton, was not breezy enough. A then-recent pop-rock hit for Detroit legend Bob Seger, it suffers mightily in comparison to the original. Seger could transfix a crowd by shifting gears from R&B-fueled powerhouse to sensitive balladeer without losing too much of his vocal gusto. Rogers was a hell of a singer, and Easton was technically gifted enough, but they’ve got so little chemistry with this song and with each other that they just sound overwrought at best.

“Dixieland Delight” was of a piece with “Swingin.’” It’s goofy on paper, with all the folksy lines about doin’ a little turtledovin’ (read: truck sex) while the chubby little groundhogs watch, but in execution it kind of rocks. No horn sections, but some stadium-rock power chords breaking it down at the end before transitioning into a fevered fiddle hoedown … it’s a master class in country-rock dynamics, I know some jaded listeners might write it off as pandering but there was never really any indication that the guys in Alabama weren’t totally the wholesome shit-kickers they usually presented as. The Oak Ridge Boys took a swing at the down-home common touch too with “American Made” but didn’t do half as well. Sounds nice enough, but the brand-name-dropping about foreign-made products probably already felt dated by the time the song’s chart run wrapped up.

Reba McEntire’s second #1 was much more in her wheelhouse. “You’re the First Time I Thought About Leaving” was a lovely, emotionally complex waltz, an almost-cheating ballad that probably hit some uncomfortable nerves on the way to the top, just like you’d want real music for real people to sometimes do. Next up was Shelly West with “Jose Cuervo,” a good-time country-pop ode to boozy adventure that’s more memorable than its modest ambitions might suggest. For one, I’d long assumed that this tune was from the mid ‘70s at the latest; it just seemed like it had always been around by 1983. And as a kid, it seemed a little gender-ambiguous; Ms. West has a rounded, sort-of-deep-for-a-female tone to her voice that sure sounded like it might’ve been a guy singing about waking up next to cowboys and dancing on the bar. In an era when gay people often went unmentioned or were mentioned with contempt, it seemed like an odd thing to hear on the radio, or at all. Maybe that’s why West did so many duets with David Frizzell; his gravelly masculinity made her voice more obviously feminine by contrast.

Next up was the also-plenty-masculine BJ Thomas, who’d drifted over from the easy-listening charts as the glory days of AM-friendly pop dried up, and lent his usual genial warmth to “Whatever Happened to Old-Fashioned Love.” Chart regular John Conlee, who couldn’t have gone pop with a mouthful of firecrackers, went sunnier than usual with “Common Man.” It’s a POV tale from a regular working-class dude romanced by a well-meaning heiress of some sort, politely rejecting her upper-crust trappings in favor of Budweiser and Chevrolet. He wants the girl, sure, but he wants her in a more down-to-earth setting free from garish Mercedes and snobby-ass pedigreed dogs. The Thomas and Conlee songs fit nicely in a paragraph together because, while not without charm, they both hint at sort of a regressive social undercurrent where old-fashioned and blue-collar are put up on a pedestal. Things were better in the past and should be more like that now, and while we’re at it living simply yet surrounded by affordable brand-name indulgences is a sign of unpretentious good character. Nothing wrong with a little nostalgia or trying to find some contentment in modest means, of course, but these sort of sentiments would just get more prevalent and (in some hands) more obnoxious as time went on.

Merle Haggard, of course, still sounded pretty blue-collar a couple of decades into a very successful entertainment career: “You Take Me For Granted” brimmed with resigned vulnerability and timeless hurt. Waylon Jennings continued to kick it defiantly old-school, reshaping Little Richard’s oldie “Lucille (You Won’t Do Your Daddy’s Will)” into something more lonesome, ornery and mean than ever would’ve occurred to the flamboyant piano-pounder. Then things got fairly slick again with Crystal Gayle’s sad-yet-bouncy “Our Love is On the Faultline” and Eddie Rabbitt’s usual yacht-rock smoothness on “You Can’t Run From Love.”  Mickey Gilley leaned on his usual loungey vibe for “Fool For Your Love” and Don Williams spiced up his usual mellow country-folk vibe with quirkier-than-usual lyrics courtesy of this author’s personal favorite songwriter John Prine on “Love Is On a Roll.”  Several veterans in a row there, more or less sticking with what usually worked best for them.

Relative upstart Ricky Skaggs kicked things up a notch, showing off his hot-pickin’ prowess with the restless chug of “Highway 40 Blues.” Alabama yet again successfully split the difference between a rocker and a ballad with the catchy, state-of-the-art country-pop of “The Closer You Get.” Pleasant enough stuff, but things took a deeper and darker turn when legendary buddies Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard sunk their teeth into Texas folkie Townes Van Zandt’s masterful, mysterious “Pancho and Lefty.” Van Zandt’s legend had been quietly building in songwriting-connoisseur circles for well over a decade by then; he didn’t really have the voice or enough of a handle on his personal demons to be a breakout star himself, and by the ‘80s the business wasn’t really looking for another Bob Dylan type anymore anyway. But critics were paying attention, and so were other songwriters (Emmylou Harris had also cut this one), including Willie and Merle who of course could give it all the grizzled grace it deserved. An obliquely poetic tale of crime, brotherhood, and regret, it was easily the oddest thing to top the country charts in 1983 and arguably the very best.   

George Jones went loungier than usual for “I Always Get Lucky With You,” which was a pretty great fit for the sweet-but-kinda-skeevy message of the song, and as per usual there’s no lack of vocal investment. Earl Thomas Conley’s “Your Love’s on the Line” wasn’t one of his strongest tunes, but dude was on a roll … it was good enough to snag another #1. Janie Fricke’s brisk, busy “He’s a Heartache (Looking for a Place to Happen)” hasn’t held up great; she was usually at her strongest milking a heartbroken ballad for all it was worth, but could come off kind of chirpy when up-tempo. The Oak Ridge Boys picked up the pace too, with “Love Song” hearkening back to the gospel-group roots that had evolved into kind of a side hustle during their run as mainstream country hitmakers. Not a great tune, but they were talented enough to do an approximation of black gospel without coming off totally ridiculous.

Ronnie McDowell did sort of an approximation of the Bellamy Brothers with the breezy, tropical-tinged story song “You’re Gonna Ruin My Bad Reputation,” a reformed-playa ballad that’s sweet in execution and smart in lyrical detail. George Strait continued the incipient stages of his decades-long roll with the stately hurt of “A Fire I Can’t Put Out,” milking the old-flame lyrical cliché for all it was worth and then some. John Conlee went bouncier than usual, which was sort of the vibe of the year, with the VSC bop of “I’m Only In It For the Love.” Charley Pride was ready for the variety show stage too on the vaguely disco-ish “Night Games,” finally emboldened to sing about some illicit sex as he drifted into middle age.

Tenderness took over for a stretch. Crystal Gayle’s pensive but tuneful “Baby What About You” was one of her finer moments on record, a smartly spare lover’s lament that showcased her wisely. BJ Thomas sang about getting “New Looks from an Old Lover” with the sort of dusky maturity that probably emboldened a whole generation of rebounding divorcees. Ronnie Milsap reverted to his usual MOR melodic dexterity for the laid-back, catchy “Don’t You Know How Much I Love You.” I know most of us have probably lost count by now, but this was his 23^rd #1 … I know I might come off as a bit dismissive of the man’s catalog, so I’d like to temper that with some credit where it’s due.

Charly McClain didn’t share Milsap’s chart dominance … she’d been trying for a half-decade before she broke through in 1981 with the evergreen “Who’s Cheatin’ Who” and subsequently flitted in and out of the Top 10 before teaming up with chart warhorse Mickey Gilley for the almost psychotically cheerful “Paradise Tonight.” A chipper anthem to two lonelyhearts breaking a streak of bad luck with a barroom hookup so fortunate it starts to sound wholesome, it had a strong whiff of contemporary pop to it (synth handclaps and all) but also served as proof that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Alabama’s empathetic, stripped-down bummer “Lady Down on Love” could’ve been a prequel to that one … a tender character study with a self-recriminating plot twist, it’s one of their best, and possibly one of the most down-tempo songs to ever hit #1. But then it’s back to wholesomely sexy cheerfulness with Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s “Islands in the Stream,” which comes off a little like they heard “Paradise Tonight” and said “oh yeah? Watch this.” Highly amplified star power, of course. Instead of approximating modern pop, just outright hijacking an actual Bee Gees song. Cooing and growling sweet poetic nothings about peace unknown and walking the night, slowly losing sight of the real thing … it’s the best kind of cheese, from two superstars that had real-deal chemistry. 

Easing into the holidays, you’ve got Lee Greenwood’s first #1 “Somebody’s Gonna Love You,” the kind of harmlessly smooth, quietly catchy yacht-country he’d eventually be second-best-known for. A year later he’d put out “God Bless the USA,” which astoundingly in retrospect barely cracked the Top 10 even in the gung-ho Reagan years. It’s common in snark circles to write off Greenwood as an opportunistic schmuck, unknown except for the one patriotic hit that ensured he’d have star-spangled mailbox money for life and at least one big gig (usually televised and on the deck of battleship) around early July every year. But this was the first of seven #1 hits, and others came close. They lean pretty watery, in that Eddie Rabbitt/Ronnie Milsap kind of way that was selling at the time. But it should be said that there was more to him than that one hit that’s sat just a couple notches below our actual national anthem in the patriotic-song pantheon for the last few decades.

Barbara Mandrell (who’d have a couple of hit duets with Greenwood in the years to come) continued her variety-show vibes with the cheated-on anthem “One of a Kind Pair of Fools.” Earl Thomas Conley hit one of the highest points in an underrated career with the downbeat, conflicted “Holding Her and Loving You.” It’s not terribly easy to drum up sympathy (“it’s the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do …”) for a two-timer but Conley pulls it off with some pretty nifty word economy and no shortage of pained but not-overdone vocal commitment. Anne Murray went vaguely topical with “A Little Good News,” a folksy anthem wishing away violence and strife with straight-faced lines like “nobody was assassinated in the whole wide world today” that somehow work just fine in context. Janie Fricke narrowed things back down to a more personal struggle with the lingering despair of “Tell Me a Lie,” a tenderly realized invitation for a cheesy barroom come-on just when she needs it most. Fricke did vulnerability really, really well.

As the year closes out we get John Anderson again with “Black Sheep,” which is an absolute roadhouse blast of a country-rock anthem. A cleverly-sketched POV tale from a blue-collar plugger with a waitress wife and a bunch of high-toned rich siblings that either ignore or look down on him, there’s just not a thing about it that doesn’t work. Anderson’s grinning, nasal-honk delivery. Those awesomely specific detailed lyrics about jacuzzis and big ol’ Japanese yachts. Even the sax solo doesn’t muck up the relentless bar-band chug. It just rips, and still holds up like a million bucks today.

And then there’s Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers (Larry’s always gotta remind everyone who’s boss) with the relatively toothless “Houston (Means I’m One Day Closer to You).” I wondered if this was all over the radio during my childhood because I grew up in the Houston metropolitan area, but in reflection it looks like it was huge everywhere. It got a two-week run at the top in an era when that was increasingly rare. It’s catchy enough I guess; it was a good year for upbeat ditties of various sorts, and “Houston” is about as ditty as it gets.            

THE TREND?

The mix of veterans and upstarts continued apace, with Reba McEntire as the year’s breakthrough right on the heels of Strait, Skaggs, et al. And this might not have been a consistent theme – there were still plenty of sad songs and waltzes to go around – but along with the mini-wave of newer artists there also seemed to be a trend to more fun, upbeat, good-humored numbers.  “Dixieland Delight,” “Swingin’,” “Jose Cuervo,” “Islands in the Stream,” “Black Sheep” … hell, even the haunting “Pancho and Lefty” has a chorus that’s fun to sing along with. Maybe the country music industry was getting a little more aware of the non-listener’s stereotype of country music as wall-to-wall sad bastard laments about cheatin’ hearts. But even the great Hank Williams was also all about the “Hey Good Lookin’” and “Honky Tonkin’” in between bouts of haunted despair. Perhaps while Nashville was trying to draw in younger listeners with younger artists, they were also trying to pull some happier listeners with happier songs. 

THE RANKING:

1. Pancho and Lefty – Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard
2. Black Sheep – John Anderson
3. Going Where the Lonely Go – Merle Haggard
4. Islands in the Stream – Kenny Rogers with Dolly Parton
5. Til I Gain Control Again – Crystal Gayle
6. A Fire I Can’t Put Out – George Strait
7. Dixieland Delight - Alabama
8. Swingin’ – John Anderson
9. Holding Her and Loving You – Earl Thomas Conley
10. Lady Down on Love - Alabama
11. Lost His Love (On Our Last Date) – Emmylou Harris
12. I Always Get Lucky With You – George Jones
13. The Rose – Conway Twitty
14. Love is On a Roll – Don Williams
15. Baby What About You – Crystal Gayle
16. Highway 40 Blues – Ricky Skaggs
17. If Hollywood Don’t Need You (Honey I Still Do) – Don Williams
18. You’re the First Time I’ve Thought About Leaving – Reba McEntire
19. You Take Me For Granted – Merle Haggard
20. You’re Gonna Ruin My Bad Reputation – Ronnie McDowell
21. The Closer You Get – Alabama
22. Tell Me a Lie – Janie Fricke
23. When I’m Away From You – The Bellamy Brothers
24. Lucille (You Won’t Do Your Daddy’s Will) – Waylon Jennings
25. A Little Good News – Anne Murray
26. Jose Cuervo – Shelly West
27. Your Love’s On the Line – Earl Thomas Conley
28. Can’t Even Get the Blues – Reba McEntire
29. I Wouldn’t Change You if I Could – Ricky Skaggs
30. I’m Only In It For the Love – John Conlee
31. Don’t You Know How Much I Love You – Ronnie Milsap
32. Night Games – Charley Pride
33. New Looks From an Old Lover – BJ Thomas
34. Our Love is On the Faultline – Crystal Gayle
35. Why Baby Why – Charley Pride
36. Whatever Happened to Old Fashioned Love – BJ Thomas
37. Paradise Tonight – Charly McClain and Mickey Gilley
38. Common Man – John Conlee
39. We’ve Got Tonight – Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton
40. He’s A Heartache (Looking For A Place to Happen) – Janie Fricke
41. Houston (Means That I’m One Day Closer to You) – Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers
42. One of a Kind Pair of Fools – Barbara Mandrell
43. Somebody’s Gonna Love You – Lee Greenwood
44. Love Song – The Oak Ridge Boys
45. Fool For Your Love – Mickey Gilley
46. You Can’t Run From Love – Eddie Rabbitt
47. Inside – Ronnie Milsap
48. Talk To Me – Mickey Gilley
49. American Made – The Oak Ridge Boys
50. Faking Love – TG Sheppard

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant is about as classic-rock-royalty as it gets; as much as his old warhorse band liked reshaping or flat-out copycatting old Delta blues, I guess it wasn't the only American music genre he had a soft spot for. His relatively recent team-ups with onetime bluegrass prodigy turned somewhat-of-a-country-star Alison Krauss revealed that the sweet-voiced acoustic maestra had kind of a complementary thing for gracefully aging arena rockers too. Their collaborations were big with the Grammy voters and the NPR-ish roots-music crowd and tastefully repurposed a well-curated mix of early rock and pop tunes, folk nuggets and singer-songwriter fare, and at least one stone country classic in Merle Haggard's "Going Where the Lonely Go." Steering into the wistful dreaminess of it all instead of trying to match Hag's hard-lonesome delivery - a tall order even for talents on the level of Plant and Krauss - they handled it beautifully.

1982 - we come here quite often to listen to music ...

Part of the charm of the country charts as one era eases into another is the interplay of old and new, the lack of impetus to shake off something tried-and-true as soon as something shiny and new comes along. This was even truer back in the pre-‘90s days when the industry seemed to embrace its primary role as the soundtrack to adult middle-American life, uninterested in making a big play for kids and trend-hoppers but up for appropriating the sort of light-rock and easy-listening that might draw full-grown listeners away from the country side of the dial. But at the same time there’d be reassuring room for the sounds and artists that had roped in the last generation or two of fans. Maybe it sounded jarring at the time to hear Willie Nelson or George Jones back-to-back with Ronnie Milsap or Eddie Rabbitt, but to the business it probably calculated as a better gambit than ditching the former or rejecting the latter.

Alabama bridged ’81 into ’82 with the run of “Love in the First Degree,” and also bridged a downhome image with some pop-smart songcraft about as well as anyone could. They ceded to the perpetually-underrated Gene Watson, a native Texan who’d been kicking around the charts for most of a decade by then and finally scored with “Fourteen Carat Mind,” a bitingly rueful tale of a low-stakes golddigger leaving a trail of heartbroke (and just broke-broke) rednecks in her wake. It was hardcore, hot-pickin’ country but immediately gave way to Ronnie Milsap’s typically florid and state-of-the-art “I Wouldn’t Have Missed it for the World.” Not a bad tune, but if cultural anthropologists 100 years from now are trying to figure out what exactly made country songs “country,” this is one they’re going to have a tough time with.

While they’re at it they might wanna just skip Conway Twitty’s “Red Neckin’ Love Makin’ Night.” Twitty’s longstanding gift for bringing dignity to the cheesiest and horndoggiest of sentiments finally failed him on a pandering Jerry Lee Lewis knockoff with traces of disco detritus and unbecoming self-name-dropping. Juice Newton, a willowy beauty who’d been knocking around the music industry for over a decade, finally struck emotive gold with “The Sweetest Thing (I’ve Ever Known).” Like most of her material, it was more earthy pop than country, but it was also more than close enough. Mickey Gilley’s languid country-pop blend on “Lonely Nights” continued his low-key hot streak, and as per usual with him it was nice to hear a song he could make all his own instead of trying to borrow a classic. 

Eddie Rabbitt’s “Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight” continued his streak of sounding sort of like country music’s answer to Eddie Money or Billy Squier, with plenty of big-hook competence but not a ton of resonance. TG Sheppard continued to split the difference between macho and romantic on the catchy-but-slight “Only One You.” Don Williams scored his 12^th #1 with “Lord I Hope This Day is Good,” another master class in letting stronger emotions slip in around the edges of stoic warmth; music biz lifer Ed Bruce wouldn’t have as storied of a career, but “You’re the Best Break This Old Heart Ever Had” pulled off a similar trick nicely. 

And then things got really, really good for a week with Rosanne Cash and “Blue Moon With Heartache.” A shimmery, heartbroken, self-recriminating meditation on a love gone sour, it blended pretty much everything that was good about the day’s contemporary pop and country sounds into something sublime. Just perusing the list I thought I didn’t know this one, but yeah I probably heard it several dozen times as a kid and I hope I hear it several dozen more at least. I guess I just thought it was called “What Would I Give” or “Go Away” or some other line from the chorus. Her music would eventually get even more adventurous and introspective (mainstream gatekeepers said things like “pretentious,” but to hell with ‘em) but in the moment, nobody on the country charts was splitting the difference between conventional beauty and forward-thinking smarts better than Ms. Cash.

The already-legendary Charley Pride went back to the VSC (variety show country) well with “Mountain of Love,” but it’s a tuneful, smartly-written blast so it kind of transcends the mini-genre I sort of made up. “She Left Love All Over Me” was another hit of suggestive country soul from Razzy Bailey, his last ride to the top of the charts before a steep drop to the lower reaches for the rest of the decade. The Oak Ridge Boys, meanwhile, were only hitting their stride, although the cheesy retro-bop of “Bobbie Sue” doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would sustain a dominant run. What with the lines about the titular neighbor girl just turning 18, it sounds more like the sort of thing that’d put a bunch of middle-aged harmonizers on a watchlist.

Merle Haggard was already living up to his name to some extent by 1982 (and to be fair, probably by 1962 also) but he sounded both sly and ornery on “Big City,” a swinging declaration of get-off-the-grid independence that resonates a little more with every traffic jam or social media trend the modern age hands us. Conway Twitty was playing to his strengths again, digging in deep on the masculine pathos with a nice side of kind-of-incongruous circus imagery on “The Clown.” Not every hit was a home run, but for the most part guys like Hag and Conway (and Willie, Jones, Dolly, Pride etc.) were easing into elder-statesman status without losing their relevance. And while Nashville’s apparent lack of ageism at the time was noble enough, it seems like maybe this was around the time that it occurred to some record execs that they could probably sell more records to young folks if they had some younger folks making at least some of the records.

Unlike some of the other relative youngsters that had topped the charts in the last decade – your Alabamas, your Eddie Rabbitts, etc. – the next round was going to lean heavily towards more traditional sounds instead of pushing the pop-rock envelope. I don’t know if this was to course-correct, or to appease the old-schoolers who were starting to sour on the lite-rock stuff, or to catch some sort of youthful zeitgeist yearning for slipping-away authenticity. But either way it spelled out a big push for folks like George Strait, John Anderson, and the next #1: Ricky Skaggs, with “Crying My Heart Out Over You.” A youthful Ned Flanders type with a sweet, clear tenor twang and a growing mastery of any stringed instrument you put in front of him, Skaggs brought some serious bluegrass chops but wasn’t too much of a purist to match it up with some radio-friendly sheen and percussion. He’d get a touch hokey sometimes, but his best stuff was (and is) a breath of virtuosic fresh air.

Alabama more or less revisited their breakthrough “Tennessee River” with the very-similar jam “Mountain Music,” a high-volume hoedown after a few successful pop-rock forays. Then it was outlaw time again, although by now Willie Nelson had realized it was pretty outlaw to just drop the damn outlaw posturing and sing something as tender and soaring as “Always On My Mind.” Transcending some of the cheesy pop production touches with his heavy wonder of a voice, inimitable phrasing, and distinctive Spanish-tinged guitar, it was one for the ages; a mature love song tinged with self-reproach and a plea for forgiveness. The only sort of thing that was worthy of following this up was Willie himself, guesting with Waylon Jennings on the latter’s hard-driving, more-conventionally-outlaw “Just to Satisfy You.”

Up next was the only 1982 #1 I don’t remember from my childhood: TG Sheppard with “Finally.” Fair enough, because it’s not memorable. Sheppard’s a good singer but the song’s got one of those melodies that’s both kind of challenging and really not worth it. Slow and anemic, it mercifully slid right back out of #1 and let the Bellamy Brothers take over with their usual blend of breezy and lustful on “For All the Wrong Reasons.” Again: these guys were excellent at being pretty damn direct without coming across like a couple of creeps. But maybe not as good at it as Conway Twitty: who the hell could be? Any mojo he lost early in the year with that dumb “Red Neckin’…” song came barreling back on his cover of the Pointer Sisters then-recent soul hit “Slow Hand.” Leaning mostly on his gritty low end like a carefully-permed Barry White, Twitty scored himself another late-career signature song.

There’d be plenty more dabbling in the light-R&B pop-crossover end of the pool, with Ronnie Milsap’s tuneful but slight “Any Day Now,” Barbara Mandrell’s twinkly “Till You’re Gone,” and Alabama’s catchy come-on “Take Me Down.” Not terribly similar songs, but they collectively stood in contrast to something like Ricky Skaggs’ sweetly loping, fiddle-laced “I Don’t Care.” It was a bit saccharine, but the harmonies and instrumentation were digging for something timeless. Hank Williams Jr., a decidedly ornerier champion of country tradition, ripped through a cover of his famous dad’s “Honky Tonkin’” for another ride to the top of the charts. Albeit less audaciously than Hank, David Frizzell was leaning on a legendary family name as well (his uncle Lefty, if you’re just joining us); with “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino (To Decorate Our Home)” he was neither a retro throwback or a pop carpetbagger, just a talented vocalist delivering an amusing story to a catchy tune about overaccommodating a barfly husband. The song’s writer, Dewayne Blackwell, would eventually strike even bigger common-touch gold with “Friends in Low Places.”

Up next was one of the great cheesy guilty-pleasure country-pop earworms, the mononymous Sylvia’s “Nobody.” You know, the same Nobody that called today, hung up when I asked her name, etc. Her late-song resolve to win back her straying partner by getting better at sex (at least that’s what I got out of it) is pretty inspiring too. But maybe not as inspiring as the now-legendary George Strait scoring his first #1 with “Fool Hearted Memory.” It was his fourth major-label single after a couple runs at the top ten. It’s a smartly-written, emotionally-rich ball of fiddle-and-steel heartache from back when the still-young troubadour had a bit of youthful yelp to his voice. I don’t know if it was clear at the time just how grand of a run was kicking off here, but in retrospect how could it not have been obvious? Strait was smart but accessible, handsome but not in some off-putting pretty boy sense, visibly young but audibly steeped in country tradition. If everyone in Nashville interested in selling records didn’t see gold, they weren’t looking especially close.

Kenny Rogers was still as good a gamble as anyone, and the earthy but sophisticated country-pop of “Love Will Turn You Around” was one of his best. Jerry Reed stuck with the hot-pickin’ comedy approach to country music and scored with the lighter-side-of-divorce anthem “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft).” Michael Martin Murphey wasn’t necessarily a fresh new face if you’d been hip to the Texas-based “Cosmic Cowboy” scene where he was among the ringleaders, and even if you’d missed that then his crossover 1975 lost-horse epic “Wildfire” barely missed the #1 all-music Billboard spot (and topped the adult-contemporary charts) in an era where dreamy singer-songwriter stuff was all the (quiet, laid-back) rage. So he already had a solid reputation as an adventurous, genre-bending singer-songwriter but appears to have decided to dial it down for something a bit more mainstream; fair enough because “What’s Forever For” is lovely, and so were several of his other successive singles. He'd only hit #1 once more, but perhaps Top 40 country was always meant to just be a stop along the way.  As that leg of his career wound down, he’d commit to traditional cowboy balladry and eventually bluegrass, serving a smaller audience but hopefully with a nice chunk of Nashville money in the bank.

Mickey Gilley was still on an undeniably durable but oddly non-iconic roll, with the big-sweep country-pop of “Put Your Dreams Away” giving him another gold record to hang on the wall of his namesake nightclub. Then things got considerably more iconic, damn near a country-legend singularity with Merle Haggard and George Jones teaming up to cover Willie Nelson’s “Yesterday’s Wine,” which you kind of wish was co-written by Waylon Jennings just to bring things full-circle. It’s a warm, wise and timeless tune, not really missing anything in the stripped-down Willie original but it certainly lent itself well to a grizzled, steel-drenched duet. Perhaps emboldened by the success of the Outlaws compilation a few years prior, “buddy albums” were a bit of a country-music phenomenon as the ‘70s eased into the ‘80s. Various combinations of Willie, Waylon, George, Merle, Cash, Price, Paycheck etc. would team up and burn through a few numbers (in more ways than one, probably) and once in awhile notch a memorable hit. Most of it’s not as essential as their prime solo work, but still it’s kind of cool that these grown-up play dates were captured when everyone was at or near the height of their powers.

It's hard to get mad at a legend for leaning on their legend, and Dolly Parton certainly qualified when she remade her own “I Will Always Love You” for the soundtrack of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, memorably starring Dolly herself alongside Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise and the least-convincing college football team to ever sing in the shower. The B-Side, “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind,” got some play as well. It may not be as heart-melting as the A-side but it’s smart, tuneful, and only slightly derailed by whoever’s grunting out the bass harmonies a little too high in the mix like a death-metal Lee Hazelwood. Ronnie Milsap wasn’t covering himself yet but “He Got You” was pretty interchangeable with his other recent hits, all yacht-rock grooves and sax solos that sound about as country as a Prius. Alabama’s “Close Enough to Perfect” had some pop sheen to it too but was grounded by relatably specific lyrics and warm harmonies. Charley Pride was staying in his ’80s wheelhouse of big-production VSC but managed to keep the cheese level manageable; with “You’re So Good When You’re Bad,” he was finally comfortable dialing things up from “warmth” to some actual heat. Faithful domestic heat, sure, but at least things had maybe progressed to the point where a black man singing about sex wasn’t considered too scary for radio.

Ricky Skaggs sure as hell wasn’t gonna scare anybody; on a cover of Texas legend Guy Clark’s “Heartbroke” he sanded down the “pride is a bitch” line to keep things radio-friendly, and honestly it’s worth it to have something this intricately wordy and mature in the pantheon of #1s. I doubt the songwriter intended it as a bluegrass-pickin’ showcase but it lent itself well to it. It was a lot classier than TG Sheppard’s “War is Hell (On the Homefront Too),” a story song that’s almost “Coward of the County”-level WTF in its detailed depiction of a 1942 teenage kid hastily recruited by the love-starved wife of a deployed soldier for a little afternoon delight. There were still a lot of WWII vets alive and well in 1982 and I wonder if any of them called up their local country station and told them to knock this shit off. Not enough to keep it from going to #1 I guess.

Janie Fricke scored one of her better hits with “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Easy,” a damaged-goods lament that she threw herself into with her usual heartfelt gusto. Maybe this is a good time to talk about Fricke, which people otherwise don’t really do all that often. She was a good-looking lady but not overly glamorous; she looked kind of like your mom’s friend from work who just happened to score a record deal. She’d broken through by doing supporting vocals on Johnny Duncan hits but soon leveled up to working with the likes of Charlie Rich, Merle Haggard, and even Ray Charles. A bit like John Conlee over on the male side, she had a knack for inhabiting songs of working-class despair and self-doubt. Her best song, “You Don’t Know Love,” didn’t hit #1 but seven others did. She was no lightweight but, unlike some of her storied collaborators, has gotten a bit lost to history.

Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle have been too, to some extent, but “You and I” was just the sort of genreless crossover bid that made them fairly big stars in their day. Also cracking the Top 10 on the Adult Contemporary and Hot 100 charts, I guess it’s pretty perfect as a soap opera wedding ballad if that’s what you’re in to. “Redneck Girl” by the Bellamy Brothers was way more fun, fulfilling their usual knack for sounding like they’re totally checking out the honeys but managing not to be leering creeps about it. “Somewhere Between Right and Wrong” was another win for Earl Thomas Conley, who unlike some of his contemporaries wrote most of his own material; catchy but with plenty of lyrical meat on the bone, and a cool synthesizer-I-think riff to spice it up, it was an early triumph for a guy who’d be one of the biggest success stories of ‘80s country music whether he’s remembered that way or not. Florida honky-tonker John Anderson, who’d had a couple runs at the Top 10 by this time, closed out the year with the even stronger “Wild and Blue.” A brisk 6/8 lament shot through with wailing Cajun fiddles, his first #1 put him on the list alongside George Strait, Ricky Skaggs, and Hank Jr. as relatively young bucks giving the business a tradition-minded shot in the arm without a ton of overlap in their approaches. You’d see it again around 1989, about the time Mr. Anderson was gearing up for a well-deserved comeback.

THE TREND?

Maybe more so than usual, the list of 1982 #1s looks like an ongoing tug-of-war between the forces of stoic tradition and crossover ambition, occasionally within the same song. And ironically, much of the former was being driven by new-to-the-table youngsters while the country chart veterans (even the rustic likes of Willie Nelson) dabbled in adult-contempo hybrids. In the right hands, either approach can come up gold, but to these tastes the old-school approach has a far better batting average. Six-year-old me probably would agree … I don’t remember if my folks let me change the radio station every time “You and I” came on, but I do vaguely recall wanting to. At any rate, the mix of already-legends and talented upstarts was as good in 1982 as anyone could hope, to the point where you wish that approach would’ve survived a few decades more.

THE RANKING

1. Blue Moon With Heartache – Rosanne Cash
2. Always On My Mind – Willie Nelson
3. I Will Always Love You/Do I Ever Cross Your Mind – Dolly Parton
4. Fourteen Carat Mind – Gene Watson
5. Wild and Blue – John Anderson
6. Fool Hearted Memory – George Strait
7. Lord I Hope This Day is Good – Don Williams
8. Yesterday’s Wine – Merle Haggard and George Jones
9. Big City – Merle Haggard
10. Just to Satisfy You – Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson
11. Heartbroke – Ricky Skaggs
12. The Sweetest Thing (I’ve Ever Known) – Juice Newton
13. The Clown – Conway Twitty
14. For All the Wrong Reasons – The Bellamy Brothers
15. Love Will Turn You Around – Kenny Rogers
16. Somewhere Between Right and Wrong – Earl Thomas Conley
17. Nobody - Sylvia
18. Slow Hand – Conway Twitty
19. I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home – David Frizzell
20. She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft) – Jerry Reed
21. What’s Forever For – Michael Martin Murphey
22. Close Enough to Perfect - Alabama
23. Mountain Music – Alabama
24. Honky Tonkin’ – Hank Williams Jr.
25. It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Easy – Janie Fricke
26. Mountain of Love – Charley Pride
27. Crying My Heart Out Over You – Ricky Skaggs
28. Lonely Nights – Mickey Gilley
29. Any Day Now – Ronnie Milsap
30. Take Me Down – Alabama
31. You’re So Good When You’re Bad – Charley Pride
32. Redneck Girl – The Bellamy Brothers
33. I Wouldn’t Have Missed it For the World – Ronnie Milsap
34. You’re the Best Break This Old Heart Ever Had – Ed Bruce
35. She Left Love All Over Me – Razzy Bailey
36. He Got You – Ronnie Milsap
37. I Don’t Care – Ricky Skaggs
38. Put Your Dreams Away – Mickey Gilley
39. Only One You – TG Sheppard
40. Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me Baby – Janie Fricke
41. Till You’re Gone – Barbara Mandrell
42. Red Neckin’ Love Makin’ Night – Conway Twitty
43. Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight – Eddie Rabbitt
44. Bobbie Sue – The Oak Ridge Boys
45. You and I – Eddie Rabbitt with Crystal Gayle
46. War is Hell (On the Homefront Too) – TG Sheppard
47. Finally – TG Sheppard

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Catching on to a larger (if still largely regional) audience circa the mid-'90s, folk singer Robert Earl Keen probably did as much as anyone to keep the Texas singer-songwriter tradition of Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker etc. going into the next generation. Him catching on with rowdy college-aged crowds getting sick of the encroaching blandness of then-modern mainstream country was as big of a gamechanger as the Texas music scene had seen since the "outlaw" heyday a couple decades prior. Dozens if not hundreds of songwriters and bands of varying notoriety would pop up in the wake of his influence. However heralded Keen was as a writer, though, he wasn't shy about dipping into covers both obscure and otherwise, including a whole double album of bluegrass material with 2015's Happy Prisoner. If you sprung for the deluxe edition, you got his hard-charging take on fellow Texan Gene Watson's only #1 hit, which sounds like it was meant to be bluegrass all along.

1981 - I'd rather see you up, than see you down ...

As a 1976 baby, we’re really getting to the point here where I actually remember hearing (most of) these songs in heavy rotation on the radio as a kid. Country radio was the default at my parents’ house and in their vehicle, at both sets of grandparents’ houses where I spent big chunks of time, in various public establishments etc. That being said, there were 9-10 songs or so in the 1981 list that didn’t ring a bell for me, more than some of the years well before I was born. Maybe that’s just the imperfect memory you’d expect for a 5-year-old, maybe some of these songs just weren’t as big in the Houston area in the pre-ClearChannel days, or maybe some of these just weren’t resonant enough to stay in rotation after they tumbled back down the charts.

It started off big enough. Johnny Lee carried over from ’80 then handed off to the already-venerable-back-then Merle Haggard. Not counting his novelty one-off with Clint Eastwood from 1980, Hag hadn’t had a #1 since 1976. He hadn’t really faded, he was still cracking the top 5 on the reg, but unlike most of his old ‘60s peers the ‘80s were going to be really good to him. Age wasn’t nearly the barrier to chart relevance that it is nowadays; as mentioned before, even the relative newbies came off pretty middle-aged in content and persona. “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink” was an example of how a few artists found a version of ‘80s production that didn’t sound chintzy or dated, but played to their strengths.

“I Love a Rainy Night” crossed over to a pop #1 even though it only topped the country charts for one week; not a ton of substance, but the finger-popping catchiness and Rabbitt’s energetic delivery were clearly good for something. Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” pulled off the same feat, but with the benefit of an iconic voice and being attached to a hit feature film.  As with the movie, it wasn’t exactly a heart-toucher but it did have some lasting social relevance, especially for women who felt overworked and overlooked in a modern workplace. A bit of a country-pop trifle on the surface, a closer listen reveals some pretty clever lyrical detail, a reminder that songwriting is one of Parton’s many gifts.

TG Sheppard was a journeyman by comparison, but “I Feel Like Loving You Again” is invested with some genuine-sounding tenderness instead of his usual default swagger. Fellow journeyman Razzy Bailey kept the sort-of-R&B flame going with the mildly groovy “I Keep Coming Back,” b/w “True Life Country Music” which was an interesting early example of interpolating titles and quotes from better-known songs and calling it clever enough. First-time chart-topper Charly McClain picked up the tempo with the spare, pop-tinged, endlessly catchy groove of “Who’s Cheatin’ Who,” followed up by warhorse-by-now crooner Mel Tillis with the eminently forgettable “Southern Rains.” I don’t remember hearing this as a child, as an adult perusing classic-country stations or playlists, I’ve never heard anyone cover or mention it, and after listening to it a couple of times a few days ago to try to jog my memory I couldn’t currently quote you a line or hum you a snippet of melody. It’s easy to see why folks liked the affable, baritone-voiced Tillis; I like him too. But it’s hard to imagine what made this one a winner for him.

Dottie West wasn’t at her absolute best either on the sad kiss-off “Are You Happy Baby?,” there’s not a ton of meat on the bone but West’s gravelly conviction was always good for something. The Bellamy Brothers cannily reprised the general premise of “If I Said You Had a Beautiful…” with “Do You Love as Good as You Look.” Similar to their signature hit (even though this time they didn’t write it), it was built around a direct, only-slightly-clever come-on but it was so catchy, breezy, and non-threatening that it didn’t come off at all creepy or obnoxious. Nice addition to a catalog that I think gets underrated sometimes.

But for a little while, it was time to shift gears to straight-up legends. Elvis Presley was four years gone at this point, and most of the King of Rock & Roll’s old fans were probably more comfortable with country (or maybe easy listening) radio than the weirder stuff that was prevailing in contemporary rock music. Elvis’ version of country music mainstay Jerry Reed’s “Guitar Man” had first popped up on the soundtrack to his 1968 movie Clambake, and somebody at RCA figured it was ripe for rediscovery so they had Reed and a new backing band come in to record a new electrified track around Presley’s vocal from the original. Eventually the recording industry would pull this trick on all sorts of deceased legends, but at the time this was a bit of a novelty (and apparently a welcome one at that). Willie Nelson was up next with something timeless: the glorious heartache and gratitude of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” should do just fine for the next 100 years with no tweaks needed. It’s certainly up there with Nelson’s greatest masterpieces as a singer, songwriter, and (while we’re at it) guitarist.

Hank Williams Jr. was still early in his transition from mimicking his long-gone legend of a father to confidently self-mythologizing the both of them, and he scored his first #1 with the rakishly macho waltz of “Texas Women.” Full of clever rhymes and loved-‘em-all swagger, it was a pretty solid introduction to the larger-than-life performer he was becoming. “Drifter,” the first big hit by mononymous semi-star Sylvia, had much less staying power; an odd little number that sounds like the theme song to a variety-show parody of a B-western flick, it’d be overshadowed by other bigger hits of the era including her own. Can’t say I recall ever hearing it before researching (if that’s the right word) for this article. Conversely, I can’t remember ever not knowing every word to “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” … that thing was everywhere, and deservedly so. Lefty Frizzell’s nephew David and Dottie West’s daughter Shelly might’ve had the benefit of nepotism but they sure didn’t half-ass the opportunity: as the arrangement gradually swells from a bare-bones crawl to a harmonica-driven big-sky force of country-pop nature, they’re both up for every key change and subtle tempo shift, making their characters feel as real as their voices. It’s a beauty.

“Old Flame” by Alabama had a nicely subtle glow about it, a quietly catchy little country lope with layered harmonies, a laid-back counterpoint to the romantic paranoia of the lyrics. They might’ve been more Skynyrd on stage back in their heyday, but they were more Eagles on record. Those upstart kids weren’t squeezing Mickey Gilley off the charts, though: if anything he was getting better and more tasteful, laying off the too-smooth covers of soul and country classics and tackling a mournfully clever song like “A Headache Tomorrow (Or a Heartache Tonight)” that he could make all his own. Conway Twitty stretched his legs at least a bit by tackling the hearty Bee Gees ballad “Rest Your Love on Me,” which sounds like it was tailor-made for him anyway, and was backed by the similarly sturdy “I Am the Dreamer (You Are the Dream).” Ronnie Milsap got in on the recontextualized-cover game too, reviving the old Jim Reeves chestnut “Am I Losing You” with his usual abundance of vocal pyro; whether you think that takes a solid song to the next level or just kind of smothers it is a matter of taste I suppose. TG Sheppard was relatively laid-back, in delivery if not libido, on the self-congratulatory stud muffin anthem “I Loved ‘Em Every One.”

And then things got downright sublime. Rosanne Cash was, obviously, the daughter of already-legend Johnny Cash.  She didn’t spin her wheels trying to somehow be a female version of her famous dad, but she quickly showed that she shared his artistic edge even if she pushed it in a different direction. “Seven Year Ache” is, to these ears, one of the most perfect three minutes of music ever put to tape. An insistent but soothing groove, smartly verbose lyrics that push the envelope of country wordsmithing, crystal vocals with longing and regret shining just below the surface. She’d eventually go even further in the arch, moody, not-for-everyone direction that her breakthrough hints at, but (as we’ll see) in terms of landing ambitious-sounding singles that still hit with the masses, she was one of the top commercial country artists of the 1980s. And it feels like that’s kind of been forgotten since then.

And then you get “Elvira,” which became a signature song for the already-established Oak Ridge Boys, casting their four-part harmonies (and, especially, Richard Sterban’s indelible bass vocal) in more of a novelty-song direction, reminiscent of oldies acts like The Coasters. It was penned by Dallas Frazier (who recorded it way back in 1966) and covered in 1978, coincidentally, by Rosanne Cash’s then-husband Rodney Crowell; his version was reportedly where the Oaks heard it, possibly around the same time they were scoping out the same album’s “Leavin’ Lousiana in the Broad Daylight” that they had their second #1 hit with. Pretty damn circular around here sometimes. As a kid I liked this song but was distracted by wondering if it was about the comically sexy-spooky TV personality Elvira (aka Cassandra Peterson, who hadn’t created the character yet back in 1966, but I bet I wasn’t the only one who wondered if there was a connection by the time the Oaks got a hold of it). 

Razzy Bailey spun back into the top spot with the easy-listening “Friends” which, back to my childhood impressions, seemed to be both all over the radio and, as far as I knew back then, was his only hit (if not only song, ever).  Check out Razzy Bailey on Wikipedia, there’s a picture of him as a genially smiling older man in a straw hat and Hawaiian shirt. He looks like a composite of every middle-aged songwriter I ever ran into at an acoustic open mic.  He was a gifted vocalist with a knack for sounding fully invested in whatever he was singing.  But it’s weird that, at five, he had more #1 hits than Roger Miller, Gary Stewart, and Gene Watson put together.  The more conventionally-starry Kenny Rogers and Dottie West were up for another duet #1 with the squeezably soft, forgettable “What Are We Doin’ In Love.”  Dolly Parton’s “But You Know I Love You” was well within the easy-listening vein too, but as per usual it transcended on the strength of her performance.  Anne Murray’s “Blessed Are the Believers” wasn’t gonna wake any babies either, but this sort of intelligent, well-crafted folk-pop was totally in her wheelhouse … it’s easy listening that’s easy to listen to, which ironically often isn’t the case for most of us.  She was kind of the Mary Chapin Carpenter of her day, not as prone to wit but with a sweeter voice.

Up next was another round of Barbara Mandrell, this time with “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.”  It was sort of a nod to the Urban Cowboy fad that made a lot of folks suddenly decide they were cowboys, but despite Mandrell’s charms as a performer it seemed a bit rich coming from someone who’d mostly trafficked in crossover schmaltz.  Her variety show with her sisters was on TV by the time this hit; cheesiness was kind of her thing, and she was good at it.  Bringing in George Jones for a vocal cameo and piping in crowd noise to make this sound like a live track all speaks to the crowd-pleasing calculations that made her a big deal in her day but have also arguably left most of her music stuck in it.  

Earl Thomas Conley was kind of unassumingly one of the most consistent and successful singer-songwriters of the era, and the warm grooves and smart lyricism of “Fire and Smoke” makes for a fine Exhibit A.  Alabama stayed on a soft-rock roll with the wholesomely sexy “Feels So Right” (I bet Conway was pissed he didn’t get this one) and their friendly Southern-pride rival Hank Williams Jr. barreled along amusingly through the Yankee kiss-off “Dixie On My Mind.”  I grew up idolizing Hank Jr., and good on him I suppose for following his own muse instead of just recording whatever he was asked, but if you take away the songs about his dad and the songs about being from the South his catalog gets pretty slim; it’d be like taking the beach songs away from Jimmy Buffett.  He kind of was/is Buffett for people who like whiskey, woods and guns better than margaritas, beaches and boats. 

Back to the country-pop fence-straddlers for awhile: Crystal Gayle stuck to her tuneful, vaguely elegant groove with the peppy “Too Many Lovers,” Kenny Rogers kicked up a near Philly-soul level of vocal yearning on the kinda-majestic “I Don’t Need You,” and Ronnie Milsap brought a little more piano-man swagger than usual to “There’s No Gettin’ Over Me.”  Up next was Ronnie McDowell, a Navy vet and big Elvis Presley fan. He’d scored a 1977 pop hit with the mournful self-penned “The King is Gone” and followed so close in his hero’s footsteps performance-wise that he was Hollywood’s go-to guy of the era if they needed an Elvis mimic to record vocals for movies or TV shows. As a country artist, he was bit redundant with the TG Sheppards and BJ Thomases of the day, but “Older Women” was the sort of catchy paean to regular folks that couldn’t help but hit a nerve in a good way.

Mickey Gilley eased back into his cover-band ways with a take on the Eddy Arnold/Cindy Walker classic “You Don’t Know Me.”  His performance is solid, even nicely nuanced, and this time around it benefits from not having one definitive version of it out there looming large enough to make Gilley’s take suffer by comparison (I’d still argue the Ray Charles version is really where it’s at).  Conway Twitty was up to his old tricks as well, with “Tight Fittin’ Jeans” fitting him better than actual tight jeans probably did at this point in his life.  A rakish little barroom vignette about meeting a slumming rich babe at a honky tonk (this probably rang pretty true to life in the Urban Cowboy aftermath), towards the end Twitty sings “In my mind she’s still a lady, that’s all I’m gonna say.” Which says plenty.

Razzy Bailey continued his largely-forgotten hot streak with the actually-pretty-groovy trucker anthem “Midnight Hauler,” his only notably up-tempo #1.   TG Sheppard scored one of his better ones too with “Party Time,” rocking a nice mid-tempo groove as a counterpoint to lyrics that are more melancholy than the title suggests.  Eddie Rabbitt scored his 9^th #1 with “Step By Step,” a bit of sparkly soft-rock reminiscent of Air Supply, in case that sounds like something you’d be into. Charley Pride, with a massive string of hits and a few recent hard-country Hank Williams covers behind him, dipped his toe into variety show country (VSC, around these parts) with the Vegas-y swirl of “Never Been So Loved (In All of My Life).” The Oak Ridge Boys continued their peak with the dusky beauty of “Fancy Free” and Roseanne Cash kept her hot streak going with the chugging, charming throwback of “My Baby Thinks He’s a Train.”

It was a nod to a stint of dominance for traditional country. Hank Williams Jr. scored again with the clever, name-dropping lope of “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down,” hinting at how guys like Jones, Cash and Jennings that had sort of provided a bridge between Hank Sr.’s heyday and his were easing into relatively sober elder-statesmen status. Resurgent legend Merle Haggard hit again with the dreamy, affectionate waltz of “My Favorite Memory.” Johnny Lee split the difference between twangy classicism and then-modern country-pop songcraft with “Bet Your Heart on Me,” followed by heartache maestro George Jones with the barroom-as-prison metaphor of “Still Doin’ Time.”  Somewhere nearby, Willie Nelson was probably glad to note that sad songs and waltzes were selling that year.

But, as noted, so was crossover-friendly country-pop. Steve Wariner would build a quietly notable career out of breezy numbers that sounded more than a little like what would eventually be called “yacht rock,” but his first #1 out of the gate was “All Roads Lead to You.” To these ears it sounds somehow both clunky and weightless; he’d do way better stuff eventually, but I’m not sure what zeitgeist this one captured. Alabama’s “Love in the First Degree” had a high soft-rock percentage to it as well but it was a more obvious winner and holds up pretty nicely, sticking hard to the love-as-a-crime metaphor without wearing it out. Newer strains of pop were infiltrating the country sound, but bands like Alabama were doing their best to prove that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

THE TREND?

If you fast-forward to the ranking, 1981 looks like a pretty solid year for the country music charts, like they capitalized on the Urban Cowboy trend with some near-undeniably good music, some more-middling stuff that you can still see the crossover appeal of, and even something starting to resemble a youthful movement. Alabama, Hank Williams Jr., Rosanne Cash, Steve Wariner, Earl Thomas Conley and others would have many more moments in the sun throughout the ‘80s and beyond, and the fact that these artists didn’t sound overly similar to each other speaks well for the sort of intergenre diversity that might aggravate purists but keeps things interesting for the rest of us.  And some of the still-active big names like Waylon Jennings and Don Williams had to live without the brass ring for a little while in a crowded field, while other legends like George Jones and Merle Haggard enjoyed a bit of a revival.  No real stinkers hit the #1s of 1981, at least to these ears; there’s a few bum notes at the bottom of the list, but for the most part it’s just lesser works from otherwise-worthwhile artists.  

THE RANKING

1. Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground (Willie Nelson)
2. Seven Year Ache (Roseanne Cash)
3. My Favorite Memory (Merle Haggard)
4. Still Doin’ Time (George Jones)
5. 9 to 5 (Dolly Parton)
6. I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink (Merle Haggard)
7. Who’s Cheatin’ Who (Charly McClain)
8. Texas Women (Hank Williams Jr.)
9. You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma (David Frizzell and Shelly West)
10. Rest Your Love on Me (Conway Twitty)
11. But You Know I Love You (Dolly Parton)
12. Guitar Man (Elvis Presley)
13. Do You Love As Good As You Look (The Bellamy Brothers)
14. Fire and Smoke (Earl Thomas Conley)
15. All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down (Hank Williams Jr.)
16. Feels So Right (Alabama)
17. I Love A Rainy Night (Eddie Rabbitt)
18. Elvira (The Oak Ridge Boys)
19. A Headache Tomorrow (Or a Heartache Tonight) (Mickey Gilley)
20. Old Flame (Alabama)
21. Fancy Free (The Oak Ridge Boys)
22. I Don’t Need You (Kenny Rogers)
23. Blessed Are the Believers (Anne Murray)
24. You Don’t Know Me (Mickey Gilley)
25. Dixie On My Mind (Hank Williams Jr.)
26. My Baby Thinks He’s A Train (Rosanne Cash)
27. Tight Fittin’ Jeans (Conway Twitty)
28. Midnight Hauler (Razzy Bailey)
29. Love in the First Degree (Alabama)
30. Party Time (TG Sheppard)
31. Never Been So Loved in All My Life (Charley Pride)
32. There’s No Gettin’ Over Me (Ronnie Milsap)
33. Older Women (Ronnie McDowell)
34. I Feel Like Loving You Again (TG Sheppard)
35. Are You Happy Baby? (Dottie West)
36. Bet Your Heart on Me (Johnny Lee)
37. Am I Losing You? (Ronnie Milsap)
38. Friends (Razzy Bailey)
39. I Was Country (When Country Wasn’t Cool) (Barbara Mandrell)
40. Too Many Lovers (Crystal Gayle)
41. What Are We Doin’ in Love (Kenny Rogers & Dottie West)
42. I Keep Coming Back (Razzy Bailey)
43. Step By Step (Eddie Rabbitt)
44. I Loved ‘Em Every One (TG Sheppard)
45. All Roads Lead to You (Steve Wariner)
46. Drifter (Sylvia)
47. Southern Rains (Mel Tillis)

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Texas crooner Aaron Watson - a longtime favorite on the rodeo and college indie-country circuits - might not have been the most obvious candidate to tackle an album's worth of female-penned classics. But to his credit, that's what the conservative-minded traditionally-Christian cowboy is going for on his latest project. Roping in another rising star with a similar buckaroo background - Jenna Paulette - he gave the Rosanne Cash signature tune "Seven Year Ache" a fresh take, hitting those expertly-crafted syllables with all the confident care they deserve.