George Jones – “I Don’t Need Your Rocking Chair”
The year was 1992. Out on the airwaves, the New Traditionalists were riding high, and the fresh-faced New Country stars…
Country
Johnny Cash – General Lee
The road dust still settles in the mind’s eye. Close your eyes, and you can practically hear the revving engine,…
Diana Ross (Crossover) – It’s My Turn
The year is 1980. The last, decadent shimmer of disco ball light is fading, leaving behind a certain quiet uncertainty.…
Pam Tillis – Mi Vida Loca
The country landscape of the mid-1990s was a vibrant, often contradictory place. It was an era of arena-sized rock guitars…
Kathy Mattea – Where’ve You Been
The air was thick with the late-night static of FM radio, a sound that has its own kind of nostalgia,…
Vern Gosdin – Set ‘Em Up Joe
The air in the listening room is thick, not with smoke, but with the ghost of it—a phantom haze that…
Dwight Yoakam & Buck Owens – Streets of Bakersfield
The air inside Capitol Studio B was reportedly thick with a mix of reverence and defiance in 1988. It was…
Ricky Skaggs – Country Boy
The year is 1984. Country radio, often a bellwether of American cultural shifts, was vibrating with a complex energy. The…
Oak Ridge Boys – Make My Life With You
The year is 1984. The landscape of country music, once defined by the grit of Bakersfield and the weeping steel…
Keith Whitley – Don’t Close Your Eyes
There are songs, and then there are cornerstones. Alan Jackson’s “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow” is decidedly the latter, a declaration…