12 fantastic songs that will make you fall in love with country music

The country music wars of the 1970s, which saw many artists depart Nashville, kicked off some serious reassessment that rippled throughout the entire genre. The exodus from Nashville was both physical – performers began recording elsewhere in order to escape the watchful eye of the labels – and spiritual. They simply didn’t want to be bound up in the old way of doing things.

But it also spun off a plethora of young musicians who were not prepared to toss the baby with bathwater. They had an affinity for Nashville and for a lot of country music’s traditions. They simply wanted to bring it up to date, with modern instrumentation and subject matter. In 1986, three of these young performers – Randy Travis, Steve Earle, and Dwight Yoakam – released debut albums that helped kick off a new chapter in country music. It was dubbed neotraditional.

The three weren’t all that similar. Travis was far and away the most traditionally conservative, while Earle could be a downright rock and roll radical. Yoakam may have been the most centrist and, in many ways, has stayed truest to what modern country music is today. Regardless of how you rate them, the three gave the genre a desperately needed shot in the arm.

12 songs that will make you fall in love with country music

They certainly didn’t do it all by themselves. Established stars like Reba McEntire and George Strait had been around for a decade or more laying a lot of the groundwork. Soon, the megastars would arrive. Garth Brooks and Shania Twain realized the dream of Nashville since the earliest days of the Opry. They crossed over and conquered the mainstream charts with a brand of country pop that charmed the nation.

The bifurcation that had once centered on Nashville and Austin morphed into this new country pop versus something being called alt country as the 1990s ticked along. It was that broadly defined alt country that first showed me how good country music could be.

From there, I went back in time to the forebearers and looked forward to the newer hybrids that would come about in the 21st century. But I did not ignore traditional country pop. Like most popular genres, it would eventually suffer from oversaturation and formulaic copying. But some of it was excellent.

We’re going to look at a dozen songs that span the mid-‘80s to the mid-aughts. They also span traditions, from old to new, and attitudes, from conservative to progressive. These days, it’s nigh on impossible to keep politics out of any discussion of country music, but at least for today, I intend to do just that. These are twelve great songs, regardless of who wrote, played, or sang them.

“Guitars, Cadillacs” by Dwight Yoakam (1986)

From one of those revolutionary debuts in 1986, Yoakam used fiddles, dobros, and the twangiest of guitars to tell a standard heartbreak story. When he reaches the chorus – “guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music – Lonely, lonely streets that I call home – Yeah my guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music – The only thing that keeps me hanging on” – he sings in the finest Hank Williams tradition.

“Gun Sale at the Church” by the Beat Farmers (1986)

The Beat Farmers had to fight off the impression that they weren’t a serious band. That partly grew out of the fact that co-founder Country Dick Montana was a bit of a caricature and that their best-known song was the novelty “Happy Boy,” which featured lyrics that went “hubba hubba hubba hubba, hubba.” But their sense of humor should not detract from some very good songs, like “Gun Sale at the Church,” from their second album Van Go. Sadly, Country Dick died of a heart attack in 1995 which effectively ended the Beat Farmers run.

“Our Town” by Iris Dement (1992)

To outsiders, Iris Dement might seem to epitomize a contradiction in country music. Her voice is as authentic as it gets. Her songs celebrate small-town America with equal parts pride and sadness. Fiddles, pedal steel guitars, and the occasional piano typically accompany her. Yet Iris Dement’s politics are as progressive as you are apt to find. She sings anti-war songs. She sings about gun control and oppressed minorities the world over. None of that shows up in “Our Town,” from her debut album, Infamous Angel. It is simply among the most lovely, poignant songs about home that you will ever hear.

“She’s a Waitress (and I’m in Love)” by 5 Chinese Brothers (1993)

They weren’t Chinese. Nor were they brothers. In fact, this progressive country outfit formed at an Ivy League college in New York City in the early ‘80s. But they had the instrumentation of a country outfit, built on acoustic guitar, with flourishes coming from fiddle, banjo, and accordion. They could rock or they could be sentimental, but they were at their best when they gave the listener a wink, as they did on this common young man’s fantasy that the waitress in the diner has eyes just for him.

“The Long Cut” by Uncle Tupelo (1993)

And thus we begin alt-country in its full flower. Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy formed Uncle Tupelo as a vehicle for bringing together the types of rock, punk, and country music that they loved. Uncle Tupelo carved out a new path that was grounded in rock and roll. But it was rock & roll that drew on many country traditions. So “The Long Cut” is basically a rock song, only it doesn’t sound like the other rock songs of the early 1990s. It has a grittiness that comes from Tweedy’s voice and touches of Max Johnston’s lap steel guitar.

Anodyne, the album it came from, would be their final one. Farrar and Tweedy went their separate ways. Farrar launched Son Volt while Tweedy and the rest reformed as Wilco. Both continued their forays into rock and roll while never completely abandoning their roots in country music.

“I Try to Think About Elvis” by Patty Loveless (1994)

Loveless was already a country star when she released When Fallen Angels Fly and its blend of rockabilly and neotraditional country scored a major triumph. The album would be her most successful crossover into the pop chart, and “I Try to Think About Elvis” would be the most successful of the album's four top ten country singles.

Loveless tosses off a couple of casual spoken lines at the start and again in the middle before using her powerhouse vocals to sing a classic rockabilly number about how to occupy your mind when you are apt to obsess on your lover. She gets support from some of the best that Nashville has to offer, including Jerry Douglas on slide guitar and Stuart Duncan on fiddle.

“Guys Do It All the Time” by Mindy McCready (1996)

Nearly thirty years later, it is still difficult to listen to McCready’s major hit without feeling the sorrow that surrounded her troubled life. Her death by suicide almost twenty years later led to plenty of reassessments and hand-wringing around all types of abuse – domestic and substance.

None of that dims the sharp, irreverent “shoes on the other foot” nature of this classic country rock groove. “So I had some beers with the girls last night – Guys do it all the time.” Once again, we are far removed from Jean Shepard’s “Two Whoops and a Holler,” when a country woman could not even say the word “damn.” In fact, as a sociological lesson, those two songs should be heard in tandem.

“Taneytown” by Steve Earle (1997)

Earle was the biggest thing in the neotraditional country in the late ‘80s with the release of his sensational Copperhead Road album. That album is still among the greatest in all of country music. Not long after that, he confronted the addictions that put his life in serious jeopardy and came out on the side sober, but no less incisive and bold an artist.

His 1997 album El Corazon features some of his best songwriting including this utterly riveting, nightmarish account of a young African American man’s journey to a town where he was not welcome. With background singer-extraordinaire Emmylou Harris adding a ghostlike patina, the song is unforgettable – a far cry from the more lighthearted numbers we have been considering thus far.

“Drunken Angel” by Lucinda Williams (1998)

Lucinda Williams was a critical darling by the time she released her fifth album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. She was 45, and she would not remain a secret any longer. The album would come to be recognized as one of the greatest blends of traditional country songwriting and singing with modern electric instrumentation.

“Drunken Angel” is her lovely, bittersweet tribute to Blaze Foley, an artist who was largely unknown during his lifetime but who was dear to many of the finest performers in the world of Americana. Williams has always been a plain-spoken poet and an authentic voice in American country. Here, she gets support from the likes of Steve Earle, Roy Bittan, and Jim Lauderdale – all of whom wanted to pay homage to Foley and simply play along with Williams.

“Goodbye Earl” by the Chicks (1999)

They were known as the Dixie Chicks back then and in 1999, they took the world of country music by storm. Fronted by the powerful voice of Natalie Maines and swept along by the multi-talented Erwin sisters (Emily and Martie) who could play virtually anything with strings, the album soared with its state-of-the-art country pop. “Goodbye Earl,” penned by Dennis Linde, is part tongue-in-cheek and part righteous anger. In the tradition of an Irish murder ballad, it is both riotous and sad, but ultimately utterly enchanting.

“Redneck Woman” by Gretchen Wilson (2004)

When Gretchen Wilson dropped her debut album Here for the Party in 2004, some old timers recalled Wanda Jackson’s “Let’s Have a Party,” released almost fifty years earlier. Jackson’s raucous rockabilly was revolutionary back in the 1950s. Wilson rode the current wave of what was acceptable for a female country singer – a rock & roll sound with a traditional country attitude – to huge chart success.

The title track was hit, but the second track became anthemic. On all matters political and social, you may not find two women more diametrically opposed than Gretchen Wilson and the Chicks’ Natalie Maines. But when they sing about how they see their place in the world of country music around the turn of the millennium, they are equally powerful.

“Play a Train Song” by Todd Snider (2004)

You’ve got to have a train song somewhere on a collection of great country songs. And when Todd Snider does one, you get a chorus like this: “Play a train song – Pour me one more round – Make ‘em leave my boots on when they lay me in the ground – I am a runaway locomotive, out of my one-track mind – And I’m looking for any kind of trouble I can find.” Snider has been writing and singing some of the best country/Americana songs of the past twenty years. Start with this one and then dive in on the rest.

That concludes part 2. We still have a dozen catnip country songs that will leave you wanting more. The final chapter will focus on the last ten years when the world of country music has gone through some of the biggest changes in its history.

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