It’s The Nineties: Number Ones from The Oak Ridge Boys, Mike Reid, Toby Keith, Sara Evans

By Jonny Brick

1990 The Oak Ridge Boys – No Matter How High

The Oak Ridge Boys are an institution who have been going in one form or another for eight decades; they’re members of the Opry twice over! They just lost member Joe Bonsall, who was an Oak Ridge Boy for 50 years, but lead singer Duane Allen is about to celebrate his diamond jubilee. The quartet will forever be known for giddying up on Elvira, but they had 15 other country number ones, of which this was their final one.

It sounds very of its time, with twangin’ guitars and echoing snare drums that underscore a song about love and stuff. Set to their patented four-part harmonies, the band promise that ‘no matter how high I get, I’ll always look up to you’, and that with their ‘feet on the ground’ they will ‘settle for number two’. The song has fallen out of their recent setlist, but such is the trouble of trying to make room for so many hits.

1991 Mike Reid – Walk on Faith

I love the story of Mike Reid, a classically trained pianist who played professional gridiron before writing hits for others, including the magnificent standard I Can’t Make You Love Me.

His single chart-topper, written with Allen Shamblin, is a major-key love song, plainly sung over a shuffling beat. Randy Travis or Keith Whitley could have had a hit with this, such is its spiritual tone: ‘It is by such grace we are bound to arrive’, ‘we stumble in stride and everything inside wants to give up’.

He advises people to ‘put one foot down in front of the other’ as their love for one another moves to a place where ‘faith must be stronger than fear’ and where ‘true love never dies’.

1997 Toby Keith – Me Too

Keith can do ballad as well as bolshy, and he shows it here on a song he wrote with Chuck Cannon (great name!) that lists all the things he does because he loves his beloved: calling her, buying roses, breakfast in bed, lie-ins, kisses, whispering sweet nothings. It’s very Garth but put through a sieve of male vulnerability.

‘It’s my way of saying what I can’t express,’ Keith croons, adding that he’s ‘just a man, that’s the way I was made’ and ‘those three little words’ often go ‘unsaid’. As with the Oak Ridge Boys track mentioned above, Keith didn’t include this in his final setlists in 2023, choosing to play some of his other love songs, but we should not forget this one, which appears on the first disc of his 35 Greatest Hits compilation.

1999 Sara Evans – No Place That Far

I know this piano ballad because Louis Walsh kept his ear to Music City and purloined this for Westlife, but the country version was Sara’s first number one and the title track of her second album. She wrote it with Tony Martin and the great Tom Shapiro, and that’s the inimitable Vince Gill adding harmonies to the chorus.

This is a great song of fidelity, where the singer is willing to ‘swim 100 rivers’ and ‘climb 1000 walls’ to be with her beloved. ‘Though the sun would still shine on, my whole world would all be gone’ without Sara’s beloved, whose love for him only ‘God above’ could allay. It’s basically a rewrite of Get Here by Oleta Adams, and the tone and timbre of the songs are very similar.

Follow Jonny through The Nineties episode by episode.

For more country music evangelism, go to countrywol.com where you can read Monday essays, Friday reviews and Sunday Hymn Sheets. Follow Jonny’s Country Music Calendar at the Country Way of Life Facebook page (facebook.com/acountrywayoflife).

Any Given Songday and Stuck at Two, the pair of series which celebrate the centenary of the Grand Ole Opry, can be found at CountryWOL.com