It’s The Nineties: Number Ones from Alan Jackson, Shania Twain, Ricochet, George Strait.

By Jonny Brick

1994 Alan Jackson – Summertime Blues

Good songs never go out of style, which accounts for Jackson’s cover of Eddie Cochran’s fifties smash, delivered in the style of Chattahoochee and with some pedal steel instead of the rockabilly guitar of the original.

Although the arrangement is anything but bluesy, the poor narrator can’t catch a break: he can’t enjoy a date, take the car out or take his problem ‘to the United Nation’ because he’s ‘too young to vote’. He can hit those low notes too, reminding us how great a vocalist he is.

1995 Shania Twain – Any Man of Mine

Writing in the book Heartaches by the Number, Bill Friskics-Warren compliments the fiddle riff, played by Garth Brooks’ player Rob Hajacos, as ‘a mongrel hoedown stomp the likes of which had yet to come out of Nashville’. He also compares this song, Shania’s first country number one which ended up at number 31 on the Hot 100, to We Will Rock You by Queen and Don’t Come Home A’Drinkin by Loretta Lynn.

Among Shania’s requests are that her man is ‘proud of me’, is on time for a date and shows her ‘a teasin’, squeezin’, pleasin’ kinda time’. There is a key change to match the effervescence of the vocals, as well as a coda full of dance steps: ‘shimmy, shake…kick, turn, stomp stomp!’

1996 Ricochet – Daddy’s Money

Here’s a song about an ideal woman who distracts the narrator in church, ‘an angel singing up there in the choir loft’ who catches his eye.

The song has no plot beyond complimenting that girl on her ‘wild imagination’ and how she is ‘a dynamite kisser’, the latter lyric punctuated by a punchy melodic line.

1997 George Strait – Carrying Your Love With Me

This stately ballad begins with Strait getting ‘a goodbye kiss’ as he leaves his beloved to hit the highway. ‘The clouds roll back and the waters part’ is what happens when he even speaks her name.