1991 - you taught me how to hurt so well ...

The reign of George Strait’s resigned but oddly catchy “I’ve Come to Expect it From You” – now that multiple-week reigns were a thing again – rumbled along for the first week of 1991, much as Strait’s career in general would be one of the vanishingly few to rumble along from the ‘80s into the ‘90s and beyond. He was followed up, predictably and poetically enough, by the wildly cresting Garth Brooks and “Unanswered Prayers.” On one hand that’s not the sort of song you expect to follow up a world-beating, game-changing anthem like “Friends in Low Places” … it was as subdued as that one was rowdy, as specific as “The Dance” was vaguely universal. But part of what made Garth special was his willingness to chunk conventional wisdom and notions of artsy taste out the window, and that approach succeeded for him way, way more often than it failed. Dialing it down and focusing on a little vignette ballad about a chance meeting with an old teenage crush at a local high school football game just made fans love him all the more, because that shit is relatable. Realizing that she ain’t all that and maybe never was, renewing not only your appreciation for your wife but your very trust in God … it’s the big things and the small things, and Garth was savvy as hell at keeping them in balance. He was the tryhard yin to Strait’s confident, steady yang. It’s cool that we all got to enjoy both.

Alabama hit the easy-listening switch again for “Forever’s as Far as I’ll Go” – not a bad hook as far as earnest balladry goes – even though that sort of thing was falling out of fashion. Then again, Paul Overstreet wasn’t an obvious bet for ‘90s-boom stardom, a veteran Nashville songwriter with a middle-aged vibe, but he’d been hovering around the top ten for awhile including #1 collaborations with S-K-O and Tanya Tucker by now. He finally got his one solo #1 with the cheerful domestic drama “Daddy’s Come Around.” This sort of suburban family slice-of-life stuff would become prevalent soon enough, but fortunately sad-bastard honky tonk anthems were back in vogue too: Mark Chesnutt snagged the first #1 of his budding career with “Brother Jukebox.” A plain-looking fella from Beaumont, TX with a deep, nuanced twang, he gave the former Keith Whitley B-side the melancholy warmth it deserved … as a footnote, on the same debut album, he also recorded “Friends in Low Places” but Garth was just a beat ahead of him career-wise. Interesting to wonder how things would’ve played out if Chesnutt’s version hit first … I don’t think the stone-country Chesnutt was cut out for Garth-style arena-country-rock, but what if his version going out to radio precluded Garth releasing it? 

It's not like the logic of anything was airtight; Mike Reid was a longtime cross-genre songwriter (not to mention a Pro Bowl NFL defensive lineman in the early ‘70s) who performed live but hadn’t recorded much. Hell, Alabama had just had a #1 hit with one of his co-writes (“Forever’s as Far as I’ll Go”) but Reid was up for a little solo spotlight so he kept “Walk On Faith” for himself. And it’s not really a conventional country hit for any era: it vaguely sounds like a cross between a Dire Straits jam and a James Taylor love song. But it’s brisk, sturdy, and earnest; I’m glad it found its way in even if Reid never had another major hit as a vocalist. 

Alan Jackson was a much more obvious exemplar for the direction Nashville was heading at the moment. A tall, lanky, offhandedly handsome Georgia native with an aw-shucks demeanor and a cool mustache, he was steeped in the sounds of George Jones and Merle Haggard but always managed to steer clear of sounding like a rote revivalist. He’d buzzed close to #1 several times since early 1990 and finally grabbed it with the sweet, simple “I’d Love You All Over Again.” Now that we’ve finally gotten to mention Jackson we can talk “Class of ’89,” a name a few publications hung on the quartet of Clint Black, Garth Brooks, Travis Tritt and Alan Jackson, who had all put out their major-label debuts in 1989 and started having hit singles in short order. They did seem to have a slight head start on folks like Mark Chesnutt and Joe Diffie, in terms of spotlight, and though they shared certain influences they were different enough in look, sound and presentation that they certainly didn’t run together. They were all hovering around 30 at this point but seemed younger, which was not insignificant when it came to attracting young female fans, not to mention young male fans looking for an aspirational figure. You might like all of them – the honky-tonk poet, the charismatic cowboy, the redneck biker, the laconic everyman – but one of them was bound to be more representative of what you wanted to be (or, for the thirsty in the audience, what you just plain wanted).

Clint Black was as honky-tonk poetic as ever on “Loving Blind,” on enough of a roll that a lyrically-dense meditation on heartache could steamroll to #1 for him as long as there was plenty of steel guitar on it. Garth Brooks was as charismatic a cowboy as ever on the roadhouse country shuffle of “Two of a Kind, Workin’ on a Full House,” and that charisma went a long way towards steering a song that was maybe a bit too cute into something worth digging. His hyper-twangy pronunciation of words like “radio” was worth the price of admission. Alabama was closer to the class of ’79 but big enough (and savvy enough) to endure: they went back to the well of countrified lyricism and big-production sheen for “Down Home” and scored a three-week run on top. Dolly Parton was even more of a throwback to country past at this point, but she proved built to last on the charming, affectionate duet “Rockin’ Years” with Ricky Van Shelton, who gets mad props just for not getting blown off the stage by such a legendary collaborator.

George Strait scored another touchdown for the relatively old folks with “If I Know Me,” barely breaking a sweat as usual while milking a relatable lyric for all it was worth.  It held on for a couple of weeks before ceding to several rounds of relative newbies. Doug Stone, a twangy crooner out of Marietta, GA, had already broke through at this point with a couple of fairly hard-country numbers (including his debut “I’d Be Better Off in a Pine Box”) but it was the softcore office romance of “In a Different Light” that scored him his first #1. Maybe a fluke, maybe a reminder that despite some hillbilly posturing this new-country boom was, at heart, suburban as hell. Diamond Rio, a band that had evolved from basically an Opryland theme park attraction, got their first trip to the top with the teen-romance memoir of “Meet in the Middle.” Big hook, lovely harmonies, a little hokey and a lot catchy, it was another early sign of the genre’s turn towards the safe and wholesome that would become more obvious as the ‘90s rolled on. Joe Diffie topped the charts again with “If the Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets),” a swinging, wryly funny ode to debt that also had one of the era’s most (intentionally) hilarious music videos. 

Speaking of music videos, Garth Brooks actually managed to stir up a little controversy with one for “The Thunder Rolls.” The song, a moody minor-key vignette about a cheated-on wife getting wise to her husband’s bullshit, doesn’t reference spousal abuse or wifely gunplay. But the video seemed to, and that was enough to put off cable channels like CMT and TNN who opted not to play the video even though Brooks was emerging as the genre’s most popular artist. Brooks (who starred in the video with a bad toupee) was annoyed enough that he stopped making music videos for awhile – no skin off his back, his albums were practically selling themselves at this point – and just took the opportunity to crank out some VHS tapes including the “Thunder Rolls” video alongside his handful of previous ones. It probably sold a million copies. Ah, the pre-streaming days … come to think of it, Brooks had another VHS hit with a concert special that included a performance of “The Thunder Rolls” with an extra verse about shooting the guy. Pretty intense stuff.

Alan Jackson didn’t really do intense. “Don’t Rock the Jukebox” was the lead-off single from his second album and would pretty much be his signature song; it didn’t have the crossover momentum of “Friends in Low Places” but it did fine and then some, with a three-week run at #1 and a baked-in mission statement that Jackson would loyally adhere to. Much like the Garth tune, it was a simple-ish song that still seemed to speak to a moment when country music was starting to look like a movement, a value system, a statement of identity even though it was starting to break through regional and demographic lines more than it had since the Urban Cowboy fad. Ricky Van Shelton wasn’t quite as on-the-nose with “I Am a Simple Man” but the vibe was similar, a masculine dude crooning over a nice bar-band groove about hard work and good women. And good women like Trisha Yearwood were elbowing their way into the mix too: “She’s in Love With the Boy” mixed in a whiff of youthful desire and rebellion with a big helping of small-town wholesomeness.  Alongside the aforementioned Dolly Parton duet and a not-yet-mentioned Reba McEntire tune, this was a rare female-artist hit in a boys-club kind of year … the balance would be better-calibrated over the next few years, then eventually get way back out of whack in a way I guess we can discuss if and when we can bring ourselves to talk about 2000s mainstream country.

If and when we do, we’ll still be talking about George Strait for awhile … here he is again, calmly charming his way to the top with “You Know Me Better Than That,” which was in keeping with the other recent hits about good ol’ country dudes who didn’t need your black tie affairs and rocked jukeboxes and big-city nonsense. This gal was trying to drag George to ballets and symphony halls, man … she sounds awful. Strait remained irreplaceable, but plenty of folks who were starting to join him at the top would be doing so for quite some time: Brooks & Dunn scored their first #1 with “Brand New Man.” They weren’t youngsters, really; Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn had been knocking around Nashville as songwriters and aspiring artists for at least a decade apiece before somebody decided they might do better teamed up, sort of like a way more fun S-K-O. Dunn had the big rangy radio-friendly twang; Brooks was just passable as a vocalist, but a savvy songwriter and dynamic stage presence.  “Brand New Man” was a bracing, big-hearted, and optimistic blast. Another multitalented guy who’d been knocking around on the edges of the Nashville scene, Lionel Cartwright, scored a big-hearted hit himself with “Leap of Faith” but his run to the top proved to be considerably less enduring.      

These would be the last upbeat numbers to rise to the top until the year was almost gone. Clint Black scored with one of my personal favorites, the wearily beautiful “Where Are You Now,” just letting the bottom drop out of his voice on some notes of profound melancholy. Ricky Van Shelton scored his last #1 with a sad-sack installment in the aforementioned Wholesome Three-Act Country (WTAC) genre; unlike George Strait’s “Love Without End, Amen,” “Keep it Between the Lines” wasn’t a career-boosting shot in the arm. I guess the last verse about single fatherhood just bummed everyone out a little too much. Van Shelton’s a gifted vocalist and made the most out of some timeless material during his run at and near the top; he wasn’t quite as distinctive as a Randy Travis or Dwight Yoakam, and as his career wound down there was talk of alcohol problems and other personal issues that probably weren’t helping. A couple of years later he’d be out of the Top 40 entirely, trying his hand at gospel records and indie releases and pretty much retiring circa 2006.   

Despite all the outlaw posturing and motorcycle photo shoots, Travis Tritt usually did best chart-wise with soft-rock balladry that he could give an extra edge with his brawny vocals. “Anymore” totally could’ve been a Michael Bolton song, but thankfully Tritt recorded it himself. It’s really good, but it’s hard to mentally divorce it from Tritt’s Reba-esque penchant for trying to act in overwrought music videos, in this case portraying a traumatized wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet ignoring the letters of his estranged love and the encouragement of his burly roommate to pull his shit together and call her. To quote a later-career Tritt hit, I’m sure everyone had good intentions. Alan Jackson gave a more laconic performance in the video for the lovely, simple “Someday,” he was just fixing up an old car so his woman wouldn’t give up and leave him out of disappointment. Hate to spoil the ending for you, but the video’s happier than the song.

Garth Brooks was vocal about being a pretty omnivorous music fan: he loved George Strait and George Jones, sure, but also Queen and James Taylor and Kiss and other unfashionable-by-then stuff like Billy Joel. “Shameless” wasn’t one of Joel’s big hits, and we were in one of the few windows in recent country music history where repurposing a soft-rock number wouldn’t be encouraged, but Brooks had the benefit of the doubt and then some. As big-production ballads go it’s a good one; Brooks didn’t have a technically gifted voice, but I’d argue he brought considerably more soul and personality to the song than its originator could. Randy Travis was still hanging in with the sweet if sleepy “Forever Together.” He’d written it with even-younger gun Alan Jackson while the latter was opening for the former on tour, which must’ve felt a little like getting stuck with training your replacement. Reba McEntire got in on the late-’91 slow-jam party as well with “For My Broken Heart,” a big but sort of generic ballad elevated by her performance as well as the relatable hook: no matter how hard life wallops you it also doesn’t give you much space to recover.

“For My Broken Heart” gave way to, appropriately enough, “My Next Broken Heart.” Brooks & Dunn mercifully picked up the tempo with the eminently danceable honky-tonk shuffle, the sort of unforced soulful cleverness that the best up-tempo country music always displayed.  It was easy to imagine George Jones or Merle Haggard singing it a lifetime ago, but then again it wasn’t explicitly retro: it was becoming sort of the sound of a new era. Sure, there are some purists you’ll never please, but if you were a longtime country fan worried that the slide into watered-down crossover stuff was inexorable, it had to be an encouraging note to end a year on.

THE TREND?

It sure looked like we were getting close to complete turnover from the early ‘80s to the early ‘90s. Past rounds of young stars – George Strait and Reba McEntire in the early ‘80s, The Judds and Randy Travis in the mids, - didn’t so much take over as they did assimilate into a field of long-haul stars. But the ones that swung in with the dawn of the ‘90s just seemed to get bigger faster, not to mention more numerous, a brush-popper-clad wave that would wash a lot of their predecessors off the charts. Strait, McEntire, and Alabama somehow managed to stay too big to fall for quite some time, but they were exceptions. There’s that odd little anomaly of Mike Reid and Lionel Cartwright sneaking in for a #1 apiece, but both hits – along with new ones from Diamond Rio and Trisha Yearwood and stuff like “Unanswered Prayers” – hinted at a conservative undercurrent of small-town wholesomeness that would get stronger over time, leaving the jukebox even less rocked than the hard-country true believers who were enjoying their day in the sun.

THE RANKING

1. Where Are You Now – Clint Black
2. Brand New Man – Brooks & Dunn
3. Loving Blind – Clint Black
4. Rockin’ Years – Dolly Parton & Ricky Van Shelton
5. If I Know Me – George Strait
6. If the Devil Danced in Empty Pockets – Joe Diffie
7. My Next Broken Heart – Brooks & Dunn
8. Shameless – Garth Brooks
9. Don’t Rock the Jukebox – Alan Jackson
10. I’d Love You All Over Again – Alan Jackson
11. Walk On Faith – Mike Reid
12. Anymore – Travis Tritt
13. Someday – Alan Jackson
14. Two of a Kind, Workin’ On a Full House – Garth Brooks
15. Brother Jukebox – Mark Chesnutt
16. You Know Me Better than That – George Strait
17. The Thunder Rolls – Garth Brooks
18. She’s In Love With the Boy – Trisha Yearwood
19. I Am a Simple Man – Ricky Van Shelton
20. Down Home – Alabama
21. Meet in the Middle – Diamond Rio
22. Forever Together – Randy Travis
23. Forever’s As Far As I’ll Go - Alabama
24. Unanswered Prayers – Garth Brooks
25. Leap of Faith – Lionel Cartwright
26. For My Broken Heart – Reba McEntire
27. Keep it Between the Lines – Ricky Van Shelton
28. Daddy’s Come Around – Paul Overstreet
29. In a Different Light - Doug Stone

DOWN THE ROAD ...

As mentioned off-and-on in the last few entries, we are hitting a spot where it's harder to find prominent covers of most of these songs. The originals often still linger heavy in the public memory (and are so easily accessible in the streaming era), an the whole neo-traditional sound doesn't lend itself well to cross-genre covers.

But there has been sort of a '90s-country nostalgia boom in the last half-decade or so. Southern rockers American Aquarium didn't seem like the most likely candidates to jump on board - their sound and politically-tinged content are more Springsteen than Bocephus - but jump aboard they did, to the tune of two albums worth of '90s country covers. I don't know them well enough to speculate how much of this was ironic lark, sincere affection, calculated cash-in etc. but either way it was a fun bit of commitment sprinkled in amongst their well-worth-a-listen original work. Despite frontman BJ Barham's unmistakably masculine voice, they didn't get their drawers in a knot about whole-heartedly covering female singers as well, so here's their blast through Trisha Yearwood's "She's In Love With the Boy."

American Aquarium - She's in Love With the Boy

  

1990 - high as that ivory tower ...

Man … this is gonna fly by, right?  23 songs when I’m used to having to cover 50 (as if anybody’s actually making me do this). It’s not like smartphones and internet haven’t depleted my attention span almost as much as everyone else’s, so this is kind of welcome to me.

Fans who were stoked about the sound that the “New Traditionalists” brought to the table might’ve wondered if they should’ve been careful what they wished for; the older artists, traditional or otherwise, were getting pretty quickly crowded off the charts. Even bands of fairly recent vintage like Highway 101 – whose “Who’s Lonely Now?” carried over from the previous December – were subject to replacement. Sure, Keith Whitley could have one more big posthumous hit with the charming shuffle of “It Ain’t Nothin’,” but we weren’t gonna mourn as long as we might’ve in the Jim Reeves days. 

There were new means of measurement getting phased in, and they liked newbies like Clint Black even more than the old means did.” "Nobody’s Home” wasn’t as grabby as his last couple of hits, but it was a slab of cleverly written stone-cold country delivered by perhaps the best new voice in the business. And now it could reign for three weeks instead of getting the ol’ turn-and-burn treatment. Yeah, Alabama only notched a week with “Southern Star” even though it was as catchy and dynamic a piece of country-rock wisdom as their last couple, but hell maybe they were happy with being one of the only ‘80s leftovers still prominently in the mix. Eddie Rabbitt had been around even longer, mostly purveying kinda-bland crossover stuff, but you could sense he was trying to meet the moment with “On Second Thought,” a spry shuffle that was more hard-country than his usual output. It’s hard to shrug and say “too little too late” for someone who’d had such a long and successful run – this was his 15^th #1 – but that’s kind of how it panned out. The Oak Ridge Boys didn’t change up their approach much for “No Matter How High,” it was on par with their heartfelt best, but it was 17^th and final for the Oaks. If you’re curious for denouement, Rabbitt passed away too young from cancer in 1998, whereas the Oak Ridge Boys are on their final retirement tour as of this writing. In the moment, they were casualties of what seemed like an intentional movement to scrub out the artists left over from the ‘80s and before in favor of a fresh start.

Patty Loveless, fortunately, had hit the charts just recently enough to get lumped in with the new guys. As usual, she delivered mightily, with “Chains” setting her signature Kentucky twang to a heartland-rock pulse. Randy Travis was pushing it a little, seeming easy to pigeonhole as an ‘80s guy, but he’d done a little too well for himself and the business to be swept out prematurely. “Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart” is moody, wordy, and kind of low-key but it was still good for four solid weeks at #1. That sure doesn’t sound like lost momentum (although he’d get there eventually, of course). 

Lorrie Morgan was the daughter of old-school country singer George Morgan – his heyday preceded the modern Billboard charts, but he’s in the Country Music Hall of Fame – and more relevantly the widow of the recently-passed Keith Whitley. She’d been a singer since her teens but hadn’t cracked the top ten until 1989’s “Dear Me,” which intentionally resonated with the sympathies over Whitley’s death. “Five Minutes” was just a breezy little ditty by comparison, but it was enough. The industry and the public were looking for a reason to cut her a break. Dan Seals was probably kind of hoping nobody noticed he was still having #1 hits, which sounds like a tough trick to pull off; “Love on Arrival” enjoyed a three week run and still sounds like a breath of fresh air, all jangly acoustics framing Seals’ sweet country tenor. 

Travis Tritt, meanwhile, was coming barreling out of the Georgia bar band scene with a vaguely biker-ish look and attitude and a brawny, soulful voice that didn’t wimp out even when he slowed things down. “Help Me Hold On” is probably still his best song, a vulnerable and sincere apology with a nice touch of Bob Seger-ish pulse under the balladry. Clint Black took back over with a fourth #1 from his debut album; “Walkin’ Away” is a smart, wryly sweet little waltz about trying to retain some sort of silver lining from a failed relationship. He might’ve been a better bet than, say, Rodney Crowell when it came to trying to sell records to youngsters, but he was smuggling some of the same folk-rock songwriting ambition into a hard-country aesthetic. It wouldn’t last forever without getting watered down, but for the moment this stuff ruled.

Ricky Van Shelton was still more baby than bathwater for the moment, living up to his New Traditionalist designation with the timelessly resilient country shuffle “I’ve Cried My Last Tear for You.” At one point he might’ve been signed in hopes of finding a new George Strait, but the original was farther from being done than anyone else in this entry: on paper at least, “Love Without End, Amen” was his biggest hit ever with a five-week run at #1. Was it also his best? I’d lean towards no. It’s pleasant, and Strait’s never a hard guy to hear, but if it’s not the first incidence of a trend it’s probably the most influential of what I’m going to call Wholesome Three-Act Country (WTAC). This kind of thing would soon be inescapable. Three verses, usually each representing some stage of the protagonist’s life, tied together poignantly by a chorus that takes on slightly different meanings in light of each little vignette. I don’t consider myself a hardhearted guy; quite the opposite, really. I’ve had a happy childhood, marriage, and parenthood so I don’t know why exactly I’m so suspicious of when someone tries to squeeze all of that into a country song. Maybe it’s the cloying wholesomeness. Maybe it’s the puzzle-piece aspect of the songwriting and once you’ve heard it all fit together you don’t need to hear it again. It’s just not my thing, but it’d be the whole damn genre’s thing off and on for the rest of our lives.

Next up was Garth Brooks with “The Dance,” and this was going to be the first of two 1990 watershed moments for him that you couldn’t have planned out better if you were making a fictional movie about a country singer who takes over the world. “The Dance” is the sort of vague, dreamy balladry that Brooks’ ‘70s folk-rock heroes like James Taylor made hay with back in their day. There’s an obvious metaphor to draw you in, and lots of imagery about the stars above and soon-to-fall kings that could apply to anything from your graduation to your divorce to your funeral. It is delivered so damn warmly by Brooks that he clearly means every word and then some. The video featured archive footage of John Wayne, Martin Luther King Jr., Keith Whitley and deceased rodeo rider Lane Frost, legends of different vintage bound together by the fact that sure, this song could be about all of them and you and everyone you know. Like “Hotel California” or “Riders On the Storm” or whatever, but way more wholesome and sincere, it’s not as deep as it thinks it is but it’s elevated by Brooks’ performance.

Dan Seals swung in for one last dance with a nice version of soul legend Sam Cooke’s “Good Times” and then immediately two-stepped down the charts forever. To me, he’d hit a really nice balance of that pop-rock crossover stuff and the kind of relatable storytelling knack that makes for good country music; he wasn’t the most distinctive star of his era, but he certainly brightened up his little corner of it. He got two weeks for his last hurrah. Shenandoah definitely had a middle-aged vibe about them in a business that was trending younger, but they were still strong in the mix with “Next to You, Next to Me” for three whole weeks at #1. It was cute and all, roughly of a piece with the aforementioned WTAC, meaning lots of folks liked it more than I did. Alabama was doing their best to put off obsolescence with the best cool-dad vibes they could muster. Kind of like Eddie Rabbitt earlier in the year, they seemed willing to steer more to a trad-country sound in keeping with the times; “Jukebox in My Mind” was neither a southern-rock banger or a soft-rock come-on, just a straight-up country shuffle implying that listening to oldies (like, say, early Alabama albums?) was solid heartache relief.   

That one scored four weeks at #1, and so did its successor, although to much farther-reaching impact. “Friends in Low Places” was the debut single off of Garth Brooks’ second album, a savvy bit of scheduling right on the heels of “The Dance” winning everyone over just a couple months prior. At first glance it’s just another barroom singalong, a modest shoutout to blue-collar bars and rowdy-ass friends with verses about disrupting some snobby ex-love’s black-tie soiree just to, I guess, let them know how much you don’t care what they think. On paper it’s just low-key clever. In practice, it just tore the roof off of modern country music. Every redneck – actual, wannabe, in-between – who’d ever felt shamed for liking country music better than the hipper, tonier options out there could bask in the vicarious joy of telling a bunch of rich stiffs to get bent en route to pounding beers down at the Oasis. Appropriately enough, it was written by a couple of dudes named Earl Bud Lee and Dewayne Blackwell (which of course sounds like what you’d name a couple of redneck cartoon characters) who probably weren’t trying to write an outright anthem but ended up with one anyway. Garth Brooks’ mission to take relatability larger than life had just hit its tipping point and it was about to rain money.

The rest of the year was pretty subdued, as if nothing could really grow all that tall in the looming shadow of “Friends in Low Places.” Reba McEntire – who’d weather the storm of newbies quite nicely over time – scored with another moody, emotionally rich ballad in “You Lie.” Joe Diffie, who’d been knocking around as a songwriter and demo singer since the mid-‘80s, finally got his push with the earnestly grateful “Home.” Upbeat but tender, it was a worthy foot in the door for a perpetually underrated vocalist. Holly Dunn scored her second and final #1 with “You Really Had Me Going,” a catchy little chugger that sounded a bit like an ‘80s throwback right at the time when the industry was supposed to be avoiding that kind of thing. KT Oslin was characteristically low-key, mature, and offhandedly sexy on “Come Next Monday,” the last #1 of her unconventional little run at the top. And George Strait, fittingly enough, brought the year to a close with the weary but hearty kiss-off of “I’ve Come to Expect it From You.” It was pretty low-key too, holding up better than his dad-country hit from earlier in the year, also managing to hold down the top spot for five weeks in a row. It might’ve been Garth Brooks’ year, but even he’d probably admit it was still George Strait’s country.

THE TREND?

It wasn’t quite the bloodletting that 1990 was, as far as longtime chart presences getting their final run at the top, but there was certainly a whiff of that. George Strait, Alabama, Reba McEntire, and Randy Travis fit the new model well enough for now; Eddie Rabbitt, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Dan Seals didn’t. And the changeup in chart methodology meant there was a little less #1 to go around, so perhaps the competition was more cutthroat than the usual aw-shucks country star persona would reveal. Much was made of the brewing (but not unfriendly) rivalry between Clint Black and Garth Brooks to be sort of the face of the new generation; Black had the early lead, but despite having arguable advantages in songwriting, vocal chops, conventional good looks etc. it wasn’t enough of one to overwhelm the sheer can’t-stop-me charisma and ambitions of Garth Brooks. Equal parts barroom buddy, marketing genius, and unconventional rock star, this was the year he found his stride. But to be fair, he wasn’t leaving the competition in the dust: it was more like one of those rising tides that lifts all boats. Or at least the ones that weren’t intentionally sunk just because they launched prior to 1987 or so.                  

THE RANKING

1. Friends in Low Places – Garth Brooks
2. Nobody’s Home – Clint Black
3. Walkin’ Away – Clint Black
4. Chains – Patty Loveless
5. The Dance – Garth Brooks
6. Home – Joe Diffie
7. It Ain’t Nothin’ – Keith Whitley
8. Help Me Hold On – Travis Tritt
9. I’ve Come to Expect it From You – George Strait
10. Southern Star – Alabama
11. Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart – Randy Travis
12. Love On Arrival – Dan Seals
13. I’ve Cried My Last Tear For You – Ricky Van Shelton
14. Love Without End, Amen – George Strait
15. On Second Thought – Eddie Rabbitt
16. No Matter How High – The Oak Ridge Boys
17. Good Times – Dan Seals
18. Come Next Monday – K.T. Oslin
19. You Lie – Reba McEntire
20. Next to You, Next to Me – Shenandoah
21. Jukebox in My Mind – Alabama
22. You Really Had Me Going – Holly Dunn
23. Five Minutes - Lorrie Morgan

DOWN THE ROAD ...

We're past the point where most of these songs have a high-profile cover knocking around out there ... they're too recent, the artists that did them are still alive and well and out there singing them themselves. The early '90s stuff usually sounds too traditional for someone to refit for pop or some other genre, but not so hardcore traditional that roots-revivalist acts are banging them out for tiny labels yet. 

But: among his other unique career quirks, Garth Brooks has been (amicably) stern about keeping his music off of Spotify and other big streamers (he eventually did an Amazon-exclusive deal), a stand both principled and practical...they're generally a terrible deal for artists, and Brooks doesn't need to maximize his every possible revenue stream at this point in his financial life. But some artists with a little more need for attention have spotted a niche opportunity here: people are still gonna search for Garth songs, perhaps oblivious to his absence on some of the usual outlets, so why not insert yourself conveniently in their path?

Some dude named Brooks Jefferson (I wonder if that's his real name or a search maximizer?) has pretty much made a career out of this, and gets about a million streams a month on Spotify alone for his extended album of Garth covers. A couple of others have tried something similar, but Texas-based party-rock band Grady Spencer & The Work settled for a cover of "Friends in Low Places" nestled on a little EP with a few other '90s-friendly covers. They're legit enough that it's not one of their top-five most-streamed songs (at least at the moment), so check 'em out whether you're pining for a Garth cover or not.

‎Friends in Low Places - Song by Grady Spencer & the Work - Apple Music

    

1990 - A Preamble

Hey, good news if you’re still patiently reading along: these entries are about to get shorter.

We’ve already been over some of the changes in country music as the ‘80s drifted into the ‘90s. Lots of longstanding artists finally dropping off the charts, with the plot twist that the younger ones taking over their old spots were often more steeped in genre tradition than the folks they replaced. But it wasn’t just the names at the top that were changing, it was also the methodology of deciding who was winning in the first place.

First off, Billboard’s singles chart had previously been based off of exhaustively compiling playlists submitted by country radio stations and sales reports submitted by music retailers. The former was wildly inefficient, and the latter was also becoming less relevant as the days of the 45 rpm vinyl single faded and sales of singles in cassette or CD format never quite took their place. The trend was shifting to just buying the more-expensive full album, which the industry didn’t exactly discourage. More songwriter royalties to go around, longer shelf life for product, more encouragement of long-term fandom etc. 

Plus, in the days before email and electronic recordkeeping were universally de rigeur, physical sales of both albums and singles were often tabulated by methods as unreliable as having Billboard reps call up record stores on the phone and just asking what was selling. You can see how that’s open to accidental or intentional (or downright corrupt) misreporting. So it was understandable and perhaps laudable that Billboard decided to get with the times and overhaul things. Performance of commercial radio singles would now be tracked by a Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems approach akin to how TV ratings were measured, and sales of physical products were about to enter the SoundScan era. That bar-code-based system of reporting sales seriously democratized the public perception of a hit album in a way that ended up being absolutely huge for country music, rap, alternative rock … all in all pretty much everyone outside of the usual huge-pop-star mainstream. Perhaps most relevant to the sudden realization of just how big of a deal country music was, the sales at big retailers like Wal-Mart, K Mart, Target etc. were finally being factored into the Billboard 200 albums chart. 

This was a revelation. Country music’s core audience leaned more than most towards older people who didn’t frequent record stores, not to mention rural or small-town listeners who didn’t live anywhere near a record store and weren’t really looking for one. They could hit the Wal-Mart and pick up whatever albums they were most likely interested in, right alongside the usual cornucopia of clothes, home supplies and recreational gear. Those sales arguably mattered even more than whatever was going down in the brick-and-mortar stores dedicated to music, and it was a wakeup call for a business that had pigeonholed country music as a regional niche geared to the south, the heartland, the sticks, whatever. The biggest country stars just might have been among the biggest American music stars, period. And once this became clear, the ensuing media coverage and industry attention just made it bigger. 

So, going forward, we’re back to multiple-week runs at #1 becoming common for hit singles, so we don’t have to talk about around 50 songs each year. Not that I don’t enjoy it, but that’s probably kind of a relief for readers. Offsetting it a little, we’re going to see a glut of new artists being introduced as most of the ones we mentioned before 1988 or so disappear. We won’t have to come up with 30+ new things to say about Conway Twitty or Merle Haggard or even Ronnie Milsap, which I’m going to kind of miss. And given that 1990-1995 or so is kind of my peak immersion phase in contemporary radio country, I don’t think I’ll be needing to take many breaks to consult YouTube or Spotify or whatever to jog my memory. For better or worse, pretty much all of these songs are stuck in there for good.

Oh and yes I’m aware there’s a bit of an interest revival in ‘90s country music going on right now, so if you’ve got any friends that don’t give a shit about the old stuff then maybe this is a good place for them to start reading. 

  

1989 - last goodbyes still left unspoken ...

 We’ve been over how much the younger generation seemed to take over mainstream country music as the ‘80s wrapped up; the evidence that a younger audience came with it seems well more than anecdotal, and the trend’s going to just get stronger as we move along. But unlike older artists that had to deal with the possibility of being nudged aside to the point of possible full replacement, the incoming young audiences were piling on, not displacing. Unlike then-young listeners who got into early rock & roll with Elvis and his contemporaries but eventually found a pop trend that was a bridge too far – whether it was psychedelic Beatles, hippie culture, disco, whatever – there wasn’t much about the new generation of country stars that would shake off the middle-aged folks who’d been tuning into country radio since the ‘60s or so. If anything, folks like Randy Travis and Keith Whitley might’ve reaffirmed their love for the genre and its roots that had been a bit adrift amongst all the pop-crossover types crowding the field in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Just check out what we’re rolling into 1989 with. KT Oslin was new, but she wasn’t all that young, and “Hold Me” was a striking portrait of middle-aged doubts and fears. What they can do to strain a marriage, what love can do to bring things full circle … this isn’t dance floor come-on stuff for young hornballs in cowboy boots, this is life-affirming stuff for grownups. “Change of Heart” by the Judds wasn’t as bespoke, but in its moody downbeat pulse it plumbed similar depths of full-grown love. Rodney Crowell was also prone to going deep, but this time around he lightened things up with the roadhouse country shuffle of “She’s Crazy For Leavin’,” a humorous Guy Clark co-write that felt like timeless honky tonk. Relative youngster Randy Travis sounded warm and wise on “Deeper Than the Holler,” a young man singing about endless love that probably resonated even better with listeners twice his age.

The relatively wizened Earl Thomas Conley notched another signature song for himself with “What I’d Say,” giving the mournful hypothetical conversations of a jilted lover the mature hurt they deserved. Alabama ditched the easy listening balladry for a blast of the arena country that had got them over in the first place; “Song of the South” had been around for years, recorded by other luminaries like Bobby Bare and Tom T. Hall to minimal fanfare, and though the sound was state-of-the-art the lyrics about FDR and southern Democrats (“you ought to get a rich man to vote like that”) lent it some retro panache. Dan Seals continued to land on the tasteful side of country-pop with the jangly, yearning trucker anthem “Big Wheels in the Moonlight.” Fun fact: Seals wrote it with behind-the-scenes songwriting legend Bob McDill, who also solo-wrote “Song of the South.”

Dwight Yoakam was quickly becoming country music’s avatar of youthful, edgy-by-our-standards cool, and though the hook of “I Sang Dixie” probably wouldn’t fly today at the time it might’ve endeared him to any old-school listeners who suspected him of being an artsy outsider. Or hell, who needs the Confederate reference when you’ve got that huge tenor twang, those sweet fiddle fills and that knack for a heartsick narrative. The Desert Rose Band never pretended not to be California interlopers (albeit with a hell of a pedigree) and “I Still Believe in You” had plenty of pop inspiration in between those steel guitar licks. Not a complaint; they were great at this sort of thing. Ronnie Milsap might have been so pop it was hard to even call it country-pop anymore, but to his credit he did reach back into the archives now and then for a country chestnut he could recontextualize; folks like me are always going to love Ray Price’s version of “Don’t You Ever Get Tired of Hurting Me” better, but Milsap musters up plenty of soul on his version to make it clear he loves it too. One wonders if the success of the New Traditionalist types spurred the homage, but it’s not like he hadn’t been covering country oldies here and there for decades at this point. Ricky Van Shelton nailed a great one too, giving the clever shuffle of the old Ned Miller hit “From a Jack to a King” the sturdy baritone treatment.

Things got moody as hell for a bit, as the country charts will for most of their history. Reba McEntire gave “New Fool at an Old Game” the tender, vulnerable complexity it needed, a worthy companion to the mature female hits that kicked off 1989. George Strait didn’t do the pedal-to-the-metal anguish of some of his hard-country heroes, but he could snag a subtle melancholy edge with the best of them on the slow-rolling goodness of material like “Baby’s Gotten Good at Goodbye.” New kid in town Keith Whitley was great at low-key anguish on record, but I imagine it’s not news to anyone reading this that his real-life hurts were more drastic and ultimately fatal: “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” was the last single he released within his lifetime. A darkly compelling ballad of resilience and pain co-written by onetime Buddy Holly bandmate (speaking of brilliance cut short …) Sonny Curtis, it was already pretty unforgettable before Whitley’s passing from alcohol poisoning about a month later cemented it in as a heartbreaking landmark in country music.

Things got a little cheerier atop the charts – they had to, right? – with Shenandoah’s first hit, the chipper hungover-wedding-day narrative “The Church on Cumberland Road.” A onetime Muscle Shoals house band, they only had to knock around the charts for a couple of years before their wholesome take on modern country music caught on. The Judds offered up the dreamy, also-wholesome “Young Love (Strong Love),” with some of their sweetest harmonies finding depth in simplicity. Randy Travis notched another #1 with the swinging, humorous “Is It Still Over?” with timeless lines like “since my phone still ain’t ringin’/I assume it still ain’t you…” Alabama went back to the soft-rock well, for better or worse, but “If I Had You” has a smoky sincerity that’s hard to bitch too much about. 

But in 1989, sad songs and waltzes had a high bar to clear, between the Whitley numbers and Rodney Crowell’s monumental “After All This Time.” As a longtime wannabe songwriter myself, I can attest to how hard it is to write a heartfelt ballad of lament or devotion without ending up with cheese, goop, saccharine, or other counterproductive substances clogging up the gears. Often that sort of thing can be elevated by performance; Crowell is a fine singer, clear and rangy with personality, but what he wrote with “After All This Time” pretty well sells itself. He’d written denser narratives before, artsier lyrics, and once the chart pressure was eventually off he’d crank out albums so ambitious they’d threaten to collapse under their own weight, but I don’t know if he ever wrote a better song than “After All This Time.” I know I haven’t either. I’d assert that hardly anyone has.

Steve Wariner flexed some songwriter muscle of his own on “Where Did I Go Wrong;” not typically one to pen his own hits, he did hit a smart and vulnerable nerve here. Despite the breezy sound, there’s regret to spare in the well-paced lyrics and delivery. It was the sort of savvy that would serve him well survival-wise with young dudes like Clint Black riding their debut single all the way to #1. “A Better Man” sounded unmistakably like the work of a singer and songwriter who’d steeped himself in the hurt and wisdom of Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson, smart enough to absorb the influence without straight-up ripping it off. Gifted with a sweet, twangy vocal that was tenor by default but could drop like a rock when the material begged for an emotionally resonant low note, handsomely squinty Houston native Black immediately seemed like a Randy Travis-level freshly-discovered goldmine. Soon enough he’d be lumped in with something bigger though.

And I assume no one knew this in the moment, but in retrospect it’s kind of poetic that two longtime chart presences scored what would be their last #1 hits directly afterwards. Earl Thomas Conley was up first with the midtempo confessional of “Love Out Loud,” followed by Rosanne Cash with the Lennon/McCartney tune “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” (the only time, thus far, that a Beatles cover has topped the country charts). Conley and Cash aren’t terribly similar artists, but they were both gifted songwriters who brought a lot of mature, thoughtful original material to the table, who could blend strains of rock and pop into their art without seeming crass or rootless. The two contemporaries diverged quickly; Conley slipped down the charts for a couple of years before more or less eschewing new releases and switching to touring on the strength of his old hits. Cash was headed for a split with her then-husband and longtime collaborator Rodney Crowell, and by 1990 would be shifting gears entirely with an ambitious and deeply personal album Interiors. Even more so than other distinctive envelope-pushers that mainstream Nashville had bet on – Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, kd lang, etc. – she’d had a chance to soak up sufficient mainstream spotlight that enough fans would follow her out on a limb to make it more than just artistically rewarding.

Kathy Mattea was one of the earthy, urbane sort of female artists Cash had paved the way for; her chart-topping days were numbered too, but “Come From the Heart” was the sort of easygoing upbeat philosophical number that launched a million quote-bearing throw pillows and wall hangings. Ricky Skaggs, still as wholesome and country as all get-out, hadn’t had a big hit in a few years despite being ahead of the whole New Traditionalist game by at least a half-decade; I don’t remember “Lovin’ Only Me” at all, but upon rediscovery it’s a hearty piece of hot-pickin’ romantic positivity. It was short-lived, as comebacks go; again, here’s a final #1 for somebody who helped define the country mainstream of the 1980s, and kept the bluegrass tradition higher in the mix than any of his rivals. Once the hits dried up he refocused on gospel and undiluted bluegrass like that was what he really wanted to do all along anyway.

Eddy Raven was hanging in just a bit longer; already a music biz vet by the time he broke through, he worked some of his Cajun roots into the swinging cheerfulness of “In a Letter to You.” George Strait – perhaps to no one’s surprise, retroactively or otherwise – wasn’t going anywhere; the sturdy but mournful “What’s Going On in Your World” was his 17^th #1 and he wasn’t half done. Reba McEntire would prove to have comparable staying power, and her pensive cover of the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown” was not only lovely but also an early example of her penchant for indulging her acting ambitions in amusingly elaborate music videos. Dolly Parton had a lot going on in her video for “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That,” which is amusing on purpose, her on-camera charm akin to a superpower. Landing somewhere between pure-country charm and something resembling drag-queen campiness, it’s a thing of folksy upbeat beauty. Parton will hopefully never stop being an icon and a towering influence in country music but – as the late-‘80s trend goes – this was a lot closer to her last hit than her first.  

There were worthy singers hanging around ready to pick up the torch, though. Patty Loveless was a literal coal miner’s daughter from Kentucky who’d worked in demo studios and cover bands before breaking through big with the twangy drive of “Timber I’m Falling in Love.” Shenandoah stayed on a hot streak with the warm, wistful “Sunday in the South” as a brief interlude before another promising young female breakthrough, San Antonio native Holly Dunn with the Linda Ronstadt-ish “Are You Ever Gonna Love Me.” Vern Gosdin continued to be a not-unwelcome anomaly as a sort-of-old traditionalist who’d actually been picking up momentum as others in the old guard gradually faded; the weary but resilient stomp of “I’m Still Crazy” would end up being his final #1, but then again it was only his third. Often nicknamed simply “The Voice” for his indelibly rangy twang, he'd join the likes of Johnny Paycheck, Roger Miller, Gene Watson, Gary Stewart et al whose impact on the genre isn’t really reflected by a list of #1s. 

By now the country music world had had a couple months to absorb and process the tragic passing of Keith Whitley, the painful reminder that despair and heavy drinking were more than just jumping-off points for songwriters, the no-longer-living proof that the whole “real people, real problems” appeal of country music often took a real toll. “I Wonder Do You Think of Me” was his first posthumous release; much like George Strait’s “Baby Blue,” it wasn’t a perfect lyrical match to the real-life tragedy it was associated with in the public eye but the hook and the heart of it couldn’t help but gut you. Willie Nelson’s smart, resilient take on Beth Nielsen Champman’s “Nothing I Can Do About it Now” had the sort of Zen-like wisdom he often captured in his own writing, and might’ve been a roundabout way of acknowledging his run as one of the genre’s most commercially relevant voices was drawing to a close. This would be his final #1 as a solo artist – he’ll pop back up with some collaborations, if and when we get to the 2000s – and even though it is his 14^th, even at a dozen-plus that still kind of under-represents just how important he was to the genre. I guess part of the whole “Outlaw” mythos is that you’re not bending over backwards for the conventional brass rings, but if you kick enough ass they’ll come to you sooner or later anyway. 

Rodney Crowell was about as forward-thinking as a country songwriter gets, but he happily reached back to the past for “Above and Beyond,” an uber-catchy but stone-country number essayed in decades past by Wynn Stewart and Buck Owens. It was his fifth and final #1; I know it seems a little odd for a streak that hot to end that abruptly, but in context it’s a bit inevitable. New youth-friendly artists were about to crowd the hell out of the field – Clint Black would top Crowell’s “five #1s in a row from the same album” record within a year, just for starters – and Crowell was about to roughly mirror his ex-wife Rosanne Cash’s turn to more highly-personal, kind-of-esoteric material that wasn’t going to beg for chart promotion. It was sort of like he proved he could be a mainstream star, found it a bit unsatisfying and ephemeral, and decided to mine that clout for a detour down a road less taken. And I’m probably as surprised at you that the Judds’ hot streak is ending this soon, but their bluesy take on Carl Perkins’ “Let Me Tell You About Love” (the rockabilly legend actually plays lead guitar on the track!) was their 14^th and final #1, which is surprisingly the same phrase we just used a paragraph or so ago for Willie Nelson. But the mama half of the duo, Naomi Judd, was dealing with health issues that would soon necessitate at least a temporary retirement, and her daughter was getting poised for a solo career that we’ll be talking about soon enough.

Steve Wariner continued the morbid-at-a-glance trend of scoring a final #1 with the subtle, catchy bop of “I Got Dreams.” It was hardly a career cut short, though; Wariner had plenty left in the tank and would regularly land in the top ten throughout the ‘90s. He’d even have hit duets with Clint Black and that Garth Brooks guy we haven’t gotten around to discussing yet; he was a respected high-profile star, but the fact that he didn’t hit #1 again is mostly just testament to how crowded the field was about to get even in light of all the folks who made their last trip in 1989. Also notable: I know it’s a subjective classification, but this was the first #1 in months that wasn’t either by a “New Traditionalist” or one of the folks who helped forge the tradition (Willie, Dolly etc.) Sure enough, Clint Black swung right back in with the baritone-guitar hard-country powerhouse “Killin’ Time.” Anyone bemoaning the gradual fade of an era’s artists had to take a little comfort in the thought that if they had to lose ground, at least it was to killer stuff like that. Ricky Van Shelton’s “Living Proof” wasn’t quite as striking, but it was a smartly observed, heartily sung tale of rekindled love.

Alabama remained good at rekindling audience love; “High Cotton,” much like “Song of the South,” smartly melded touches of arena-rock opulence with downhome storytelling and earthy harmonies. Eventually arena-sized small-town anthems would become an obnoxious ongoing subgenre of their own, but I don’t wanna blame Alabama for that. George Strait came out swinging with "Ace in the Hole,” a showcase for his hot-pickin’ road band as much as anything, but by now George Strait’s answering machine messages would’ve at least had a shot at #1. Nobody would’ve mistaken Kathy Mattea for a honky tonk traditionalist, but “Burnin’ Old Memories” was a smoky little blues shuffle with no shortage of guitar firepower itself. 4^th and final, if you were wondering. Eddy Raven was in last-hurrah mode too, 6^th and final with the Cajun glory-days storytelling of “Bayou Boys.” Mattea would still boomerang back to the top ten or so multiple times over the next few years, while Raven would drop off pretty precipitously. 

Dolly Parton, God bless her, still had a handful of hits in her even though she was already a cultural icon that transcended genres and didn't need to scrap for them. “Yellow Roses” was a simple number of traditional beauty elevated by wistful, vulnerable performance. Speaking of transcending genres, Randy Travis was about as country as a haybale but he wasn’t above borrowing the old Brook Benton R&B chestnut “It’s Just a Matter of Time.” Sonny James and Glen Campbell had run country versions of it up the chart in decades past, but they couldn’t nail that low-end rumble like Travis. Oh and hey, we finally get to talk about Garth Brooks … “If Tomorrow Never Comes” was an earnest, humble bit of reflection on the ephemeral nature of life from a guy who was gonna be an earnestly humble gazillionaire megastar for the rest of his. And #1 or not, I don’t know if any of this was immediately apparent in the moment. Sure, it was good, but if you were making bets that the unstylish, modest-looking dude with the pleasant-enough voice was going to be the genre’s defining artist in the public imagination and flip the whole damn music business over on its ass … it’d be at least a couple more hit singles before it became obvious just how hot of a hand you were holding.

Dolly-then-Randy-then-Garth seemed like a nice snapshot of a moment when country’s past, present, and future kindly took turns at the top, and the rest of the year feels like a bit of a post-script. Shenandoah kept the lights on, as they would for a while, with the ruefully catchy “Two Dozen Roses.” Ronnie Milsap, believe it or not, scored his 34^th and final #1, going out on a strong note with “A Woman in Love.” It’s the same sort of big-production easy listening crossover that he’d cranked out for decades to the delight of many and frustration of a purist few, but it’s got some pulse and drive to it. Milsap had once found himself at the forefront of a trend towards adult-contemporary pop packaged as country music for older listeners who’d felt left out of trend-hopping, youth-oriented pop and rock and were looking for a safer, more-conservative haven. But audiences and expectations change, and even the most dependable hit machines aren’t immune to obsolescence; mainstream country music was finally turning into something that was easy to age out of, and in the moment it could happen even faster if you weren’t down with the whole New Traditionalist approach. Then again, Highway 101 had helped pioneer that approach, and “Who’s Lonely Now” ended up being not only 1989’s final #1, but theirs as well. Ironically, as the genre’s sound got less slick, many of its most dependable acts lost traction. 

THE TREND?          

Well, that last entry probably broke the record for number of uses of the phrase “final #1.” The comet smacked into the country music planet and you didn’t have to be a dinosaur for it to hurt. This isn’t a full list, but Willie Nelson, Rodney Crowell, the Judds, Ronnie Milsap, Steve Wariner, Kathy Mattea, Vern Gosdin, Eddy Raven, the just-mentioned Highway 101 … all of them got their last solo trip all the way up the mountain, and most of them would be totally out of contention within another couple of years. Then again, before country music hit its early-‘90s boom, gigging around the dancehalls and county fairs and modest-sized venues was standard for most of the stars, and you don’t necessarily need chart momentum to do that; a lot of these folks probably just shrugged, toasted a nice run at the top, and got back on the tour bus. They weren’t expecting it to be pulling up outside a stadium anytime soon. But soon enough, that’d be more normal than ever. A lot was changing, to the point where I think it’s time to dedicate a non-standard entry to it. And one last note before we switch decades: this is one of the few times where even the last five or so in the Ranking section are still pretty good. Lots of styles, artists, and eras were in transition, but somehow not a stinker to be found.

THE RANKING

1. After All This Time (Rodney Crowell)
2. I’m No Stranger To The Rain (Keith Whitley)
3. Killin’ Time – Clint Black
4. Song of the South (Alabama)
5. A Better Man (Clint Black)
6. Hold Me (KT Oslin)
7. I Sang Dixie (Dwight Yoakum)
8. Above and Beyond – Rodney Crowell
9. Is It Still Over? (Randy Travis)
10. Baby’s Gotten Good at Goodbye (George Strait)
11. Why’d You Come In Here Looking Like That? (Dolly Parton)
12. She’s Crazy For Leaving (Rodney Crowell)
13. I’m Still Crazy – Vern Gosdin
14. Young Love (The Judds)
15. Come From the Heart (Kathy Mattea)
16. Nothing I Can Do About it Now – Willie Nelson
17. I Wonder Do You Think of Me – Keith Whitley
18. Timber I’m Fallin’ In Love (Patty Loveless)
19. If Tomorrow Never Comes – Garth Brooks
20. What’s Going On In Your World (George Strait)
21. New Fool At An Old Game (Reba McEntire)
22. What I’d Say (Earl Thomas Conley)
23. Living Proof – Ricky Van Shelton
24. Sunday In the South (Shenandoah)
25. I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party (Roseanne Cash)
26. Two Dozen Roses - Shenandoah
27. Deeper Than The Holler (Randy Travis)
28. Cathy’s Clown (Reba McEntire)
29. Yellow Roses – Dolly Parton
30. Big Wheels In the Moonlight (Dan Seals)
31. Ace in the Hole – George Strait
32. Who’s Lonely Now – Highway 101
33. In A Letter to You (Eddy Raven)
34. I Still Believe In You (Desert Rose Band)
35. Change of Heart (The Judds)
36. Don’t You Ever Get Tired of Hurting Me (Ronnie Milsap)
37. From A Jack to a King (Ricky Van Shelton)
38. Lovin’ Only Me (Ricky Skaggs)
39. Bayou Boys – Eddy Raven
40. Let Me Tell You About Love – The Judds
41. If I Had You (Alabama)
42. It’s Just a Matter of Time – Randy Travis
43. The Church on Cumberland Road (Shenandoah)
44. Where Did I Go Wrong (Steve Wariner)
45. Love Out Loud (Earl Thomas Conley)
46. Are You Ever Gonna Love Me – Holly Dunn
47. I Got Dreams – Steve Wariner
48. Burnin’ Old Memories – Kathy Mattea
49. A Woman in Love – Ronnie Milsap

DOWN THE ROAD ...

Once we get a few years into the 2000s, Josh Turner will be one of the few we won't be at least sort of complaining about. His twangy, earnest baritone could make a bad song tolerable and a good song great, so you can imagine what he could do with something like "I'm No Stranger to the Rain." Or you don't have to, really, because here it is in all its stripped-down acoustic glory.

1988 - don't want folks thinkin' that I'd steal ...

Maybe I was getting a little ahead of myself crowing about how the “new traditionalists” were taking over. Of course things never really change that abruptly in country music.  Sure, Highway 101’s awesome, rootsy “Somewhere Tonight” might’ve carried over into the first week of 1988, but Exile was waiting in the wings with the weightlessly catchy easy listening of “I Can’t Get Close Enough” right afterwards. Dan Seals, despite looking good in a cowboy hat, was still more James Taylor than George Jones and “One Friend” is as obvious an example as any. Ronnie Milsap was still typically slicker than owl shit, plus snoozier than usual on “Where Do the Nights Go.” KT Oslin had clearly already cracked the door open for earthy female folkies because Kathy Mattea scored her first #1 with “Goin’ Gone.” I generally like Mattea but I’m not sure why that one captured the zeitgeist.

Things perked back up for a bit. Restless Heart was plenty slick but “Wheels” landed on the right side of upbeat and breezy, not forgetting that even country-pop needs a pulse. Rosanne Cash, after years of proving she didn’t need to ride her famous dad’s name or image, finally paid direct tribute to the old man with a beautifully realized cover of “Tennessee Flat Top Box.” And despite the industry tide finally turning against the veteran stars as the ‘80s wrapped up, Merle Haggard scored a #1 befitting a legend with the winsome, jazz-laced “Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star.” It was a 34^th and final #1 hit, setting a record for the moment (Hag and Conway Twitty were back-and-forth on this for a long time) and soon followed by a slide down the country charts into the nostalgia circuit. 

Haggard would continue to be a solid live draw and as respected-elder as it gets pretty much up to his passing away in 2016; what he had as an artist couldn’t be duplicated but it sure as hell resonated. In the ‘80s he was sharing the charts with younger folks like Strait, Travis, and more we’ll get to later in this entry that wouldn’t have sounded the same without his influence; if anything, his influence would be even more pronounced on not only the next round of genre-defining superstars but also on the fledgling alt-country movement cropping up in its shadows. Even if you reductively narrow it down to the songs he took to #1, Haggard’s embrace of his own complexities – tough and tender, mean and warm, repentant and proud, conservative and iconoclastic - left a footprint like none other in American music. A highly successful, enduringly famous man who somehow never forgot what it was like to be poor and desperate, and could put that to words like no one else.

Tanya Tucker was one of the few folks around who could summon up a comparable does of gut-level grit, which could anchor a song as sunny as “I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love” from drifting into church-camp guilelessness. A trio with the relatively obscure Paul Davis and Paul Overstreet, it’s a kindhearted little number about the common thread of selflessness between romantic, paternal, and divine love, a bit cloying if you’re not in the mood for it but it means well. Alabama was still going strong and would be for a while; on “Face to Face” they brought KT Oslin along for the ride for a rare duet. It’s almost too earnest to count as sexy, although Oslin’s hearty delivery gets it over the line. Randy Travis picked up his usual tempo for the hearty, humorous swing of “Too Gone Too Long,” and Ricky Van Shelton slowed his way the hell down for the morose but empathetic "Life Turned Her That Way.” Recorded in past decades by Little Jimmie Dickens and Mel Tillis, it held up well to the test of time, largely forgotten but well worth a dust-off.

The Judds went back to blues-inflected grooves with “Turn It Loose,” kind of generic but Wynonna’s committed lead vocal gives it some spark. Reba McEntire sidestepped her usual anthems of domestic heartache for the annoyingly bouncy “Love Will Find It’s Way to You,” a variety show country (remember VSC?) time filler if there ever was one. George Strait went full heartache on “Famous Last Words of a Fool,” another Dean Dillon gem worth its weight in whiskey-soaked regret. It was a nice one-week break before Eddie Rabbitt dialed up the VCS knob to eleven on “I Wanna Dance With You,” a number so aggressively chipper I guess it just burned right through the other side of my memory bank. 

KT Oslin continued on her welcome but improbable roll with “I’ll Always Come Back,” another self-penned touchstone of grown-up romance and charm. She may have been later to the party but she was certainly of a piece with longtime chart ruler Rosanne Cash, who joined up with her then-husband Rodney Crowell on “It’s Such a Small World.” Not to be confused with the aggravating Disney ride soundtrack, this was the first single off of Crowell’s landmark Diamonds & Dirt album, which would briefly hold a record for the most consecutive #1s off of a country album. Crowell might’ve seemed like an offbeat choice for a sudden mainstream solo push: as a songwriter, he’d been scoring cuts on big albums since the mid-‘70s, backing up cohorts like Emmylou Harris and his wife Cash as a bandmate and producer, and gradually accumulating a reputation as one of the best and most distinctive writers this side of Kristofferson. But although this phenomenon has largely disappeared in the sheen of youthful glamor and limited competencies that is modern country-pop, for decades it was pretty common in Nashville for someone who’d been kicking ass in the shadows for a decade or two to get called up to the big leagues. With Crowell it certainly ended up being a good bet, at least in the short term. 

Highway 101 continued to be torchbearers for modern honky tonk, punching up with the gritty goodness of “Cry, Cry, Cry,” equal parts toughness and despair. Eddy Raven went more genial with “I’m Gonna Get You,” a catchy bit of country-pop brought back down to earth by some nice Cajun-inflected fiddles. A Lafayette, Louisiana native, Raven’s knack for working bits of Cajun sound and imagery into his work made him more distinctive than the average journeyman country singer and gave him a niche avenue to explore when the hits eventually dried up. Kathy Mattea continued to play the hot hand with maybe her most-remembered tune, “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.” She might’ve been more coffeehouse folkie than honky tonk angel, but the indelible tale of a soon-retired trucker and his lady love was about as country as it needs to get.

Earl Thomas Conley continued his subtly winning ways with “What She Is (Is a Woman in Love),” giving his own pen a rest to borrow one from the great Bob McDill, who was probably already kind of missing Don Williams having big hits. Randy Travis’ hot streak continued unabated with the classic “I Told You So,” a hooky but layered lament about reaping what one sows. Like “Forever and Ever Amen,” it scored a then-rare two-week run on top. And then it was time for a first run at the top for The Desert Rose Band with “He’s Back and I’m Blue.” A crew of roots-rock veterans out of California headed up by no less a luminary than Chris Hillman, a former Byrd and Flying Burrito Brother, their noble mission to bring those old bluegrass and Bakersfield influences full circle back to the top of the country charts proved successful for a little while. They’d already come close a couple of times with subtle bangers like “One Step Forward,” but this sweet little slow-dancer with lots of earthy harmonies scored them a #1.

Tanya Tucker continued to be on a bit of a comeback roll; “If It Don’t Come Easy” had a bit of that VSC razzle-dazzle but Tucker’s lived-in, committed vocal kept it down to earth enough. Alabama never lost enough momentum to need a comeback; “Fallin’ Again” was a slight departure from the soft-rock stuff they’d been drifting towards on their singles, sounding in structure and production like an earnest Bob Seger knockoff. The earthy side of arena rock served them well; the song didn’t have much of a hook, but the sound holds up great. Rosanne Cash continued to class up the joint; “If You Change Your Mind” isn’t one of her best-remembered hits, but it does bring to mind mid-period Beatles with its melodic tightness, lyrical economy and unforced sweetness. Vern Gosdin – one of the very last examples of a hard-country vet getting a relatively late-life run at the charts – grizzled up the joint with the wry Ernest Tubb nod “Set ‘Em Up Joe.” Ricky Van Shelton was right on his heels, grabbing that hard-country torch and lighting up the mournful waltz of “Don’t We All Have the Right,” a ruefully clever obscurity from the legendary Roger Miller. If the younger crowd that the New Traditionalists were roping in started getting into Ernest Tubb and Roger Miller, noble mission accomplished.

Time for a trio of eye-themed songs. George Strait took an inevitable trip to #1 with one of his loveliest ballads, “Baby Blue.” A tender triumph in any context, it got extra resonance with fans who were aware Strait’s teenage daughter had passed away in a car accident in 1986; it’s clearly more of a song about romantic loss than family love, but all the same it echoes. Speaking of things retroactively given more gravity by tragedy … Keith Whitley scored the first of a remarkable, almost game-changing run of #1s with the indelible “Don’t Close Your Eyes.” A young singer who’d come up on the bluegrass scene, someone saw a solo artist goldmine in the handsome, curly-headed kid with the angelic twang. He’d already reached the top ten a couple of times but once the Bob McDill-penned number about a forlorn lover wishing his girl would quit treating him like a second choice landed in his hands, it made for an undeniable masterpiece. Rounding out the eye songs for now, Restless Heart scored one of their most memorable hits with “The Bluest Eyes in Texas.” Another Eagles knockoff, more or less, but then again I’m not sure how you make a harmony-driven pop-country-rock mishmash without echoing the Eagles at least a little. Can’t say they didn’t do it well.

Eddie Rabbitt went full-on oldies-cover and, true to form, he looked outside the country field for it. “The Wanderer” was an early-60s hit for Dion, a catchy little anthem celebrating one’s own studliness with a vaguely bluesy swagger (meanwhile, “Runaround Sue” was a slut I guess). Rabbitt’s version made sense; most of the once-young listeners of early rock & roll had probably migrated over to country radio by this point anyway, probably scandalized by the likes of Madonna and Motley Crue and Prince and whatnot ruling the pop-rock roost. Rodney Crowell had bits of influence from lots of genres, but typically back then he channeled it into intelligently-penned but unmistakably country numbers like “I Couldn’t Leave You if I Tried.” It’s not exactly retro, but it’s not hard at all to imagine Buck Owens or George Jones singing it 25 years prior. You could say the same for Highway 101 and “(Do You Love Me) Just Say Yes,” equal parts radio-sweet and roadhouse-tough. The band’s been a bit lost to history but they were really on to something for a while there.

Eddy Raven drifted back into the Jimmy Buffett vein (I’m not complaining … I like vintage Buffett a lot) with “Joe Knows How to Live,” a vaguely tropical and wryly funny tale of an envy-inspiring work buddy who’s romancing honeys down in Mexico on his PTO. Not saying a generic love song isn’t plenty sometimes, but it’s nice to hear specific little slice-of-life tales like this in the mix … Tom T. Hall, the king of that sort of thing, had been off the charts for a while now of course. Dan Seals went a bit more intense than usual – which is to say, still at least a little breezy – on “Addicted,” an empathetic number about a hard-luck gal’s love life. Earl Thomas Conley went a little dreamier than usual, cleverly accomplished by bringing in the great Emmylou Harris (who had mostly fallen off the charts at this point) for a duet on another Bob McDill classic, “We Believe in Happy Endings.” It had been a top ten hit for Johnny Rodriguez a decade prior, but Conley and Harris pretty much took it and ain’t giving it back. It’s not an obvious pairing, but it sure was a worthwhile one. Randy Travis remained in the new vanguard of constant chart presences; “Honky Tonk Moon” was almost Leon Redbone-esque in its sleepy retro charm, although Travis wasn’t one to let novelty or irony seep into his sincere affection for classic country.    

One of the young artists who’d squeezed into the big-label mainstream alongside Travis was Dwight Yoakam. Compared to Travis’ courtly approach, Yoakam must’ve seemed like a bit of a gamble: his main allegiances were to the harder-edged Bakersfield country sound, the bluegrass of his Kentucky birthplace, the cowpunk wildness of the L.A. nightclubs where he caught on as a live act … pretty much everything but the commercial country-pop of the ‘70s and ‘80s, in other words. But as noted in a recent entry, there were elements in Nashville looking for edgier young artists poised to earn younger fans and critical respect for a genre that was often pigeonholed by the mainstream as formulaic middle-aged entertainment. Edgy and traditional weren’t mutually exclusive goals for Yoakam, and once he got his shot seemed to come to the table pretty fully-formed; he’d scored a few exciting top ten hits before “Streets of Bakersfield” notched him an unconventional #1. A poetic hard-luck tale written by Homer Joy, Yoakam roped in his ultimate hero (and Bakersfield icon) Buck Owens to duet on a song he’d recorded himself decades prior; it was an affectionate move but also kind of a risky one, in the sense that Owens had been somewhere between forgotten and sidelined for years by then. Audiences were more likely to remember him hosting cornball Hee Haw episodes instead of dominating the Billboard charts and influencing the Beatles. But Dwight remembered, and had the aesthetic nerve to frame what must have been a dream duet with trebly Mexican-inflected guitar licks and the dreamy spark of Flaco Jimenez on Tex-Mex accordion. All these choices, and the down-to-earth brilliance of the lyrics, just add up to one of the greatest three minutes of music ever put to tape. Yoakam has never stopped making great music but I’m not sure if even he has ever topped this one.  

Nobody else in 1988 was gonna top it either but the rest of the year was pleasantly stinker-free. Tanya Tucker’s sweet, wholesome for-better-or-worse song “Strong Enough to Bend” gained some depth from her usual flinty delivery. The Oak Ridge Boys’ “Gonna Take a Lot of River” had more spark than might’ve been expected from a middle-aged harmony group, buoyed by some chugging Cajun instrumentation. T. Graham Brown, best known for working up a bluesy sweat, sounded somehow both soulful and effortless on the warmhearted “Darlene.” Rosanne Cash was a regular visitor to the top of the charts by now, but it’s still pretty impressive that she got there again with a song as lyrically ambitious as “Runaway Train.” Tight, dynamic, and conventionally beautiful as a record, it’s still a densely lyrical poetic meditation on … well, I’m not sure, but it all sounds really poignant. It was written by folk music veteran John Stewart (of the Kingston Trio, not the Daily Show guy) but it also sounded like what Cash would be turning to a year or two later. She’d always been one of the smarter, more progressive voices in the country chart room, and was about to take a turn for the even more introspective and esoteric.   

Ricky Van Shelton sounded simultaneously warm and heartbroken on “I’ll Leave This World Loving You,” a fine little anthem of one-sided romantic commitment. Reba McEntire went all torchy on the similarly regretful “I Know How He Feels,” an outside-looking-in take on an ex’s new love. George Strait took things back in a relentlessly cheerful direction with a cover of the old Tommy Collins/Faron Young mover “If You Ain’t Lovin’ (You Ain’t Livin’),” wonderfully packed with folksy little couplets about gravy trains and four-bit cigars that I’m glad weren’t lost to history. Restless Heart steered things back to wistful with probably their best song ever, “A Tender Lie.” It had their usual big production and pillowy soft-rock harmonies, but it also managed to capture the sort of humility and heartbreak that great country music deserves. Of course, Keith Whitley could muster up that sort of soul in his sleep; “When You Say Nothing at All” might be an unambiguously sweet number about lovers so well-matched they’re borderline psychic, but Whitley’s indelible twang gave it even more dimension. An undercurrent of past hurt and struggle, enough bitter to make the sweet all the better. He already sounded like a man who’d definitely lived some life, a voice that you sure wished would’ve lived a much longer one.

THE TREND?

It didn’t happen all at once, but it’s sure starting to look different here isn’t it? I’m not into doing mathematical deep dives so I’m not going to calculate the average age of the chart-topping artists here versus a couple of years prior, but a lot of longtime names are conspicuous by their absence (Willie, Dolly, Jones, Kenny, Twitty) and a lot of new landmarks are being laid down by ridiculously promising talents like Keith Whitley and Dwight Yoakam that make the likes of Strait and Reba seem like the old guard by comparison. Granted, some of the “newbies” are music biz vets getting repurposed for a run at the charts (Rodney Crowell, Desert Rose Band, KT Oslin) but they still felt fresh enough in the moment; meanwhile, one Bakersfield legend is notching the last of an astounding run of hits (“Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star” sure sounds like a curtain call) and another is more or less reminding people he's still alive with a quick cameo on a chart he used to dominate. The country-pop warhorses like Milsap and Rabbitt are kind of on their last legs as pretty much every new face that hits the chart seems more connected to the classic country of bygone eras (also note the covers of Johnny Cash, Faron Young, and um … Dion?) than anything they did. I bet it seemed like a youthful takeover of the genre was almost complete; I wonder if they knew it was really only getting started?   

THE RANKING

1. Streets of Bakersfield – Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens
2. Don’t Close Your Eyes – Keith Whitley
3. Runaway Train – Rosanne Cash
4. When You Say Nothing at All – Keith Whitley
5. It’s Such a Small World – Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash
6. Baby Blue – George Strait
7. Tennessee Flat Top Box – Rosanne Cash
8. Famous Last Words of a Fool – George Strait
9. Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star – Merle Haggard
10. I’ll Always Come Back – KT Oslin
11. If You Ever Change Your Mind – Rosanne Cash
12. Too Gone Too Long – Randy Travis
13. Set ‘Em Up Joe – Vern Gosdin
14. A Tender Lie – Restless Heart
15. I Couldn’t Leave You if I Tried – Rodney Crowell
16. Honky Tonk Moon – Randy Travis
17. Do You Love Me (Just Say Yes) – Highway 101
18. I’ll Leave This World Loving You – Ricky Van Shelton
19. He’s Back and I’m Blue – The Desert Rose Band
20. Strong Enough to Bend – Tanya Tucker
21. Don’t We All Have the Right – Ricky Van Shelton
22. Joe Knows How to Live – Eddy Raven
23. I Told You So – Randy Travis
24. We Believe in Happy Endings – Earl Thomas Conley and Emmylou Harris
25. Cry Cry Cry – Highway 101
26. If You Ain’t Lovin’ (You Ain’t Livin’) – George Strait
27. Darlene – T Graham Brown
28. What She Is (Is a Woman in Love) – Earl Thomas Conley
29. Bluest Eyes In Texas – Restless Heart
30. Life Turned Her That Way – Ricky Van Shelton
31. Addicted – Dan Seals
32. I Know How He Feels – Reba McEntire
33. Gonna Take a Lot of River – The Oak Ridge Boys
34. Fallin’ Again - Alabama
35. I’m Gonna Get You – Eddy Raven
36. I Won’t Take Less Than Your Love – Tanya Tucker with Paul Davis and Paul Overstreet
37. One Friend – Dan Seals
38. Wheels – Restless Heart
39. If it Don’t Come Easy – Tanya Tucker
40. The Wanderer – Eddie Rabbitt
41. Turn it Loose – The Judds
42. Face to Face - Alabama
43. Where Do the Nights Go – Ronnie Milsap
44. Goin’ Gone – Kathy Mattea
45. I Can’t Get Close Enough – Exile
46. Love Will Find It’s Way to You – Reba McEntire
47. I Wanna Dance With You – Eddie Rabbitt

DOWN THE ROAD ...

As alluded to in the last entry, we're getting to a point where most of these songs are too new to have prominent cover versions knocking around out there; a half-dozen or so of the 1988 hits are covers already. However, around the early '90s there was a wave of tribute albums to various acts, perhaps capitalizing on the big mainstream country boom; most of these were to the boomer-friendly likes of Merle Haggard, the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd etc. Given the tragically premature finality of Keith Whitley's career, his legacy warranted a 1994 tribute. It was a bit of a mishmash, with covers mixed in with previously-unreleased Whitley demos and a couple of songs written specifically for the project, but it was decently high on starpower with Alan Jackson, Mark Chesnutt, and Joe Diffie alongside other heavy hitters of the moment. But the biggest spotlight was reserved for Alison Krauss, a prodigal bluegrass artist who'd been on the verge of busting out of that particular niche for a mainstream run; her tender, angelic cover of "When You Say Nothing at All" was just the tipping point she needed. To her credit, she never really bent to the mainstream all that much; her moment in the radio-friendly spotlights basically just raised her profile enough to ply her usual trade to bigger audiences, win a few dozen Grammys, collaborate with superstars like Robert Plant and Dolly Parton, and just generally kick musical ass in her own unassuming way.