It’s The Nineties Episode 3: Number Ones from Keith Whitley, Collin Raye and Garth Brooks
By Jonny Brick
1990 Keith Whitley – It Ain’t Nothin’
Here’s one of two posthumous chart-toppers from Whitley, who died in May 1989; the other was I Wonder Do You Think Of Me, the title track of the album released after his death from which this song also comes.
The hook of ‘it ain’t nothin’ a little bit of love won’t fix’ is actually more or less the same one that Joey Lawrence used on his very different sounding pop song a few years later. Our poor narrator’s ‘mess of blues’, including a grinding commute alongside ‘40,000 cars on the interstate’, is eased by his beloved, whose own day has been ‘hell times three’; she suggests they hit the town because ‘even Cinderella got to go to the ball’.
Written by Tony Haselden of the band LeRoux, this one is perfect for the compilation Now That’s What I Call Neo-Traditional. There’s fiddle from Garth’s guy Rob Hajacos, acoustic guitar from Mac McAnally and piano from the great Matt Rollings, while Eddie Bayers provides rimshots on the second and fourth beat of each bar of the verse. George Strait, Alan Jackson or Randy Travis could have taken this to number one…
1991 Garth – Unanswered Prayers
So, actually, could Garth.
Saint Teresa of Avila’s epigram – ‘More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones’ – might well have inspired this inspired country song, taken from the album No Fences. Garth could fly down all the zipwires he wanted but the songs had to be good, and this was one of his very best.
The song is set at a ‘hometown football game’ where Garth’s narrator runs into his ‘old high school flame’, the one he had prayed for all those years ago; however, his wish was never granted and he ended up with his current wife. ‘Thank God for unanswered prayers!’ he cries out in the chorus, noting that the ‘angel’ of the past is not the same lady today.
‘Time had changed me,’ he sings knowingly, unwittingly adding to his own mythos: Garth himself ended up separating from the mother of his three daughters and falling for another woman.
1992 Collin Raye – Love, Me
An epistolary chart-topper from Raye, this song takes the form of a letter from the narrator’s grandma, written to his grandfather and shown by its recipient to his 15-year-old grandson.
‘If you get there before I do, don’t give up on me’ goes the chorus, quoting grandma’s words to grandpa. ‘We had this crazy plan to meet and run away together,’ explains the eloping grandpa, who then mentions the letter ‘nailed to the tree where we were supposed to meet’.
The song is dripping in MOR production techniques and schmaltz, while the chintzy synth setting provides a bed over which Raye’s echoey vocal lies. The second verse switches the camera to him, as Raye’s narrator recalls how he saw his grandpa cry for the first time just after his wife died, ‘in the doorway of a church’.
This is a pious piece of country music with a warm melody and a killer message, co-written by Max T Barnes and Skip Ewing. Famously, Barnes lost out on the 1992 CMA Song of the Year award to his father Max D, who wrote Look at Us by Vince Gill. Indeed, Gill could have just as easily been given this chart-topper.
1993 Garth – Somewhere Other Than the Night
So, actually, could Garth. Yes, it’s double Garth this week, as he held the number one on this date in both 1991 and 1993.
Within the space of those two years he had become without question the biggest star in country music; his album Ropin’ the Wind outsold Nirvana, Michael Jackson and Metallica to become America’s top seller in the first few weeks of 1992. How could he top that? By releasing We Shall Be Free, a gospel anthem of universal brotherhood that kicked off the promotion period for his album The Chase.
It stiffed, and so Garth gave radio what they wanted. This second single and second track on the album was written with Kent Blazy, who was behind If Tomorrow Never Comes. Like that song, this one is about love, with the narrator telling his male listener that his darling ‘needs to know you care’ away from the bedroom. This could either be sat on the front porch swing or, cheekily, encouraged by her standing ‘in the kitchen with nothin’ but her apron on’.
Just like the Collin Raye chart-topper, Garth’s narrator comments on how ‘it was the first time she ever saw him cry’, which accounts for the arrangement being a ballad and not a barnstormer.
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
