It’s The Nineties: Number Ones from Wynonna, George Strait, Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw.

By Jonny Brick

1992 Wynonna – No One Else on Earth

This song is practically arena rock, driven as it is by a three-note guitar riff and stabs of synth.

‘I shivered once, you broke into my soul,’ Wynonna sings with passion. She is now ‘outta control’ and full of the love she used to deny herself when she was a ‘rock’ and left her ‘fences’ up. The music drops out every time she sings ‘how did you get to me?’

1993 George Strait – Easy Come, Easy Go

This is a heartbreak song that marks the end of a relationship where ‘nobody done no wrong, that’s just the way it sometimes goes’. The arrangement, which is smooth and tender and indeed easy, matches the lyric.

This is an adult separation where Strait wants ‘no tears and no broken hearts’. He even wishes his lady ‘good luck’.

1995 Garth Brooks – She’s Every Woman

Garth co-wrote this gentle acoustic ballad, the first single from his album Fresh Horses, which could have been written by any number of singer/songwriters from the 1970s. It uses a similar chord palette and mood to several James Taylor songs.

The woman he conjures up is ‘sun and rain…fire and ice’ and ‘anything but typical’, plus ‘even at her worst, she ain’t that bad’. Interestingly for an artist who had made inroads into markets outside the traditional country marketplace, he sings about how ‘she’s so New York and then LA’.

1999 Tim McGraw – Something Like That

This is a magnificent song with a strong hook which reminds listeners of the beauty of one’s first love. Here, McGraw’s narrator was 17 when he saw a girl at the county fair. He remembers skipping rocks on the river with her, recalling a ‘barbecue stain on my white t-shirt’ and working ‘so hard to get that first kiss’.

Five years later, on the way to New Orleans, he bumps into the same lady and tells her that he thinks of her ‘every other memory’.

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