It’s The Nineties: Number Ones from Alan Jackson, George Strait, Clay Walker, Dixie Chicks

By Jonny Brick

1992 Alan Jackson – Dallas

Seven number ones in a row proved that Jackson had joined Alabama, Reba, Garth and George as a pillar of the genre at the start of the 1990s. Although the production sounds a little dated today, in 1992 it was the height of honky-tonkin’: there’s some pleasant fiddle, guitar and, from the incomparable Pig Robbins, piano too.

I daresay the writers of Blake Shelton’s song Austin were inspired by this one, where a place in Texas is also the name of a character in the song. ‘If Dallas was in Tennessee’ could be a metaphor, although it’s definitely a heartbreak song where Jackson’s poor narrator hopes ‘the gold band on her hand’ will remind me that ‘true love is a treasure that’s very seldom found’. Alas the pair had ‘no common ground’.

1993 George Strait – Heartland

When Strait started his career, John Travolta had played the Urban Cowboy on film; a decade later, Strait was a movie star himself, in the vehicle Pure Country. This song promoted the movie, and it became his 24th number one.

It’s very meta, in that it’s a ‘song about the heartland’ that reflects songs about the heartland while the movie captures Strait’s move from a young protagonist to an older one, with rural signifiers like roping bulls onscreen too. Interestingly, the film version of Strait has similarly long hair (but without the mullet) that Billy Ray Cyrus sported mere months before.

The first verse is all about the traditional sound Strait hit the jackpot with: ‘twin fiddles’, steel guitar, Saturday night at the Grand Ole Opry. Strait sings that the heartland, where mornings are ‘an endless blue’ and full of ‘simple people’ (unsaid: they buy George Strait songs), is ‘the only place I feel at home’. After four chunky bars of guitar, the hooky chorus repeats and the song is over within 2 minutes 30 seconds.

1995 Clay Walker – This Woman and This Man

If country music from the 1990s was turned into a musical, this would be a torch ballad. ‘Have we lost the key to an open door?’ Walker wonders as he beholds ‘a stranger’s eyes in a lover’s face’, something ‘nothing could be sadder than’.

Walker suffers from vocal inflections that are awfully close to those of Garth, but the melody is strong, the mood is melancholic and the guitar sound reminds me of John Mayer’s. The middle section (‘there’s only you and me to blame’) is excellent too, and it keeps the listener interested.

1999 Dixie Chicks – You Were Mine

By the end of the 1990s, only Garth and Shania were bigger than the Texan trio whose reputation grows with each passing year. Taken from Wide Open Spaces, this followed There’s Your Trouble to the top but was of a different musical tenor entirely. When it hit number one it was one of several power ballads on the charts: I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, No Place That Far, How Forever Feels, Please Remember Me and, beginning its climb to become the biggest of all, Amazed by Lonestar.

Martie and Emily wrote it about the divorce of their parents, putting themselves in the shoes of a woman coming to terms with her husband leaving: ‘I took out all the pictures of our wedding day’, ‘sometimes I scream out your name’. The middle section brings in their two children, who ‘adore you, so how can I tell them you’ve changed your mind?’

Chad J Country will be playing one of Jonny’s selections each week in his Wednesday show

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