It’s The Nineties: Number Ones from Alan Jackson, Wynonna, John Anderson, Clint Black

By Jonny Brick

1991 Alan Jackson – Don’t Rock the Jukebox

If Luke Combs wrote this song today, he would want to hear Alan Jackson rather than George Jones, although he might stick to the Rolling Stones as a rock’n’roll act to avoid.

Jackson sings of being ‘a heartbroke hillbilly’ who calls for ‘a steel guitar’ to help him deal with his pain. After all, Jones is a master of a heartbreak ballad, as in The Grand Tour or He Stopped Loving Her Today.

1992 Wynonna – I Saw The Light

Co-written by Andrew Gold, this uptempo tune narrates in real time the singer discovering that her former flame has cheated on her. ‘I saw two shadows holding each other tight,’ Wynonna sings, making a mockery of the ‘red rose’ she placed on his porch.

‘They say that love is blind, well, baby not this time,’ she adds for good measure before a confident guitar solo chimes in after her.

1993 John Anderson – Money in the Bank

It seems cliché today to boast that love is greater than money, but clichés sell for a reason. Anderson’s narrator wants to treat his beloved, ‘the apple of my eye’, to a movie. Instead of a boat he’s ‘saving on a washer and a wedding ring’, soundtracked by a jubilant fiddle.

In the final verse he tells of refusing the advances of ‘a man who invented a money machine’ in exchange for the woman, whom he prefers to ‘drive around in an armoured truck’.

1998 Clint Black – The Shoes You’re Wearing

A decade into his career, Black was still enjoying number one smashes. This one is a philosophical song, the sort Tim McGraw would enjoy much success with, on which he sings that shoes ‘don’t make the man’ so long as you can carry your load.

Matching the sparse arrangement, Black’s narrator is warm and wise: ‘if your eyes are open and your mind is free, there’s no tellin’ what a man can be’; ‘everything’s not black and white’; ‘we’re not chained to what we know’.