It’s The Nineties: Number Ones from George Strait, Tracy Lawrence, Clay Walker, Kenny Chesney

By Jonny Brick

1991 George Strait – You Know Me Better Than That

After a jaunty fiddle intro, Strait begins to sing of his new woman who is ‘in love with an image’ he has cultivated for her, including a love of high culture.

After all, he is singing to the woman who left him, who knows his ‘insecurities’ and the man he really is. We can even infer that Strait doesn’t like his lady’s cat.

1993 Tracy Lawrence – Can’t Break It to My Heart

Our ‘helpless’ narrator has just experienced the end of his relationship, with the romantic flames now ‘embers left glowing in the dark’ and ‘scattered memories…cluttered in my mind’.

It is a terrific vocal performance, with Lawrence crooning his heartache.

1994 Clay Walker – Dreaming with My Eyes Open

Written by Tony Arata, the guy who wrote The Dance, this song is effervescent, as befits a man who has just seen the light. ‘All that beggin’ finally did somebody good,’ Walker sings of his time ‘on bended knee’ in dire straits in his relationships.

His life advice to the listener, in a song that orders them to seize the moment, is that ‘in the end, we’re left with the one we chose’.

1997 Kenny Chesney – She’s Got It All

In a voice with more country and less confidence in it than it possesses today, Chesney sings of his ‘perfect girl’ over a perky arrangement. He dedicates ‘all of my love, my hugs, my kisses’ to her.

There’s also a delectable steel guitar solo, a musical equivalent of the sweetness of his lady.