It’s The Nineties: Number Ones from  Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, Arron Tippin, LeAnn Rimes.

By Jonny Brick

1991 Brooks & Dunn – My Next Broken Heart

This is a toe-tapper from the duo’s debut album. Ronnie Dunn sings of playing ‘this game that I can’t win’, perpetually drinking his heartache away and finding someone else who might ‘tear my world apart’.

1992 Alan Jackson – She’s Got the Rhythm (And I Got the Blues)

This slinky tune has Jackson watching his former partner dancing with a new man. ‘I thought I wanted freedom, but that ball and chain, I need ’em,’ he sighs over a familiar blues chord progression.

1995 Aaron Tippin – That’s as Close as I’ll Get to Loving You

Introduced by a delightful fiddle riff, Tippin pines for the touch of someone he can never have. ‘I can tough your hand accidentally,’ he suggests, or sing a song about her, but she belongs to someone else instead.

1996 LeAnn Rimes – One Way Ticket (Because I Can)

The final number one song to be celebrated in this series (and thank you for taking the time to read and enjoy the country chart-toppers across the year) belongs to a woman who strives to follow her own arrow. Over an upbeat arrangement, she heads off ‘into the great unknown’ towards ‘a new horizon’, ready to ‘fall in love again’ and dance in the rain.

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