Welcome to It’s The Nineties, a series from Jonny Brick, founder of A Country Way of Life, a site where he has been evangelizing about country music in all its forms since 2017.
Over the course of the year Jonny is going to celebrate 200 country number ones from the 1990s. They could be by superstar artists like Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson or Garth Brooks, or from one-hit wonders by forgotten names. Do you, for instance, remember chart-topping songs by Wade Hayes, Rick Trevino or Paul Overstreet?
These 200 number one hits could be cherished copyrights which were covered by other artists in other styles, like I Swear or Nobody Knows, or they could have been lost in the sawdust of country time. At some point, just to prepare you, Jonny will have to mention Achy Breaky Heart, which was number one for the entirety of June 1992.
Across the decade, as well as line-dancing or wedding slow-dance classics, rock music came into the genre though acts like Brooks & Dunn and Shania Twain. Superstar female singers like Faith Hill, Lorrie Morgan, Reba McEntire and Trisha Yearwood were never off the radio, while King George Strait continued from where he left off by dominating the Nineties as he had done the Eighties.
So, in the words of a George Strait song and album title, let’s hop into the honky tonk time machine and set the controls for the heart of the Nineties; a time before broadband internet, before Donald Trump hired apprentices on primetime TV, and when nobody outside of business magazines had heard of Elon Musk. Oh it was a much simpler time.
It was the Nineties!
Episodes
Episode 1: Highway 101, Vince Gill, Garth Brooks and Terri Clark