Nothing else could be #1. And it's all the more remarkable that someone who had his first big hit in the 1950s could make what would ultimately be his signature song in the 1980s, just incredible longevity. All credit to producer Billy Sherrill for believing in the song despite Jones's skepticism, and framing his voice with that incredible surge of strings. I wrote a song a few years ago riffing on the title of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" after watching somebody get consumed by heartbreak until their death, so it means something else to me now. 

I used to look through the cheap cassette bin at the Sound Garden in Baltimore as a teenager and pick out tapes to listen to in my first car, and Dwight Yoakam's debut Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. may be the first country album I ever bought. I was curious what Etc., Etc. was abbreviating, turns out it's "hillbilly music."  

Terry Stafford co-wrote "Amarillo By Morning" and made it a minor hit in 1973, but it really became a classic in the hands of George Strait a decade later. In the early '80s, Strait became the dependable neotraditionalist who could top the country charts without crossing over like Kenny Rogers or Dolly Parton -- he didn't even chart on the Hot 100 until his 25th country #1, and he eventually racked up 44 of them, more than anybody in history. And "Amarillo By Morning" is referenced in the country song that's currently #1 song on the pop charts, Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas." 

Keith Whitley was just becoming a major star in 1989, and "I'm No Stranger To The Rain" became Whitley's third country #1 just weeks before he died of alcohol poisoning at 34 years old. It's a song about surviving whatever life sends your way, rendered all the more poignant in that context, and Sam Goldner wrote an excellent piece about it for Pitchfork just a couple weeks ago. 

Parton, Ronstadt, and Harris first attempted to record an album as a trio in 1978, but they didn't pull it off for another 9 years. 1987's Trio went platinum and Parton's "Wildflowers," one of the album's only original songs and its fourth top 10 country hit, is really just one of the most gorgeous things she's ever written, I'm glad she recorded with two other amazing voices. 

Alabama had an incredible run in the '80s, with a streak of 21 consecutive country #1s out of 27 through the whole decade, there aren't a lot of artists who've dominated any radio format like that. The title track from 1982's Mountain Music was the sixth single in that streak, and Alabama interpolated it on another #1, Brad Paisley's "Old Alabama," in 2011. 

I love a little Nashville wordplay, you think it's gonna be a song about Arkansas and then Reba sings this bubbly, catchy little tune about slipping that little rock off her finger and getting out of an unhappy marriage. She really sells a lyric like few others can. 

"Tennessee Whiskey" was a minor hit for David Allan Coe in 1981 and then a smash for George Jones a couple years later. These days, it's best known for Chris Stapleton's 2015 version that is 20 times platinum(!!), the highest certified country song of all time, but I gotta be honest, I don't like Stapleton's arrangement. He turned a 4/4 song into a waltz, slowed it down, and made it two minutes earlier than the '80s versions, I'll take the George Jones version any day of the week. 

I love how this song ends, and how the pure charm of Strait's delivery of the lyric makes it work, he's just so effortlessly smooth. 

The elder Hank Williams looms large over country music as perhaps the genre's most revered legend. His son has had a pretty great career in his own right by any measure, but certainly only a fraction as important as his father in the grand scheme of things. It's like if there was a Buddy Holly Jr. or a Sam Cooke Jr. running around the last few decades making fratty party songs and football promos. Some of those songs are fun, though, "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" is a sequel of sorts to Hank Jr.'s 1981 hit "All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)," which jokingly lamented that many of his rebellious country star contemporaries were getting older and mellower. 

George Jones's reputation as an alcoholic preceded him, and he built a catalog of great drinking songs to go along with it. "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me" is my favorite from his vein of tragicomic drinking songs, and when I was out with friends earlier this year and was prodded to sing at a karaoke bar for the first time in my life, this was the first song I decided to sing. 

Plenty of Canadian country singers have had success in America, from Shania Twain and Terri Clark to more recent stars like Josh Ross and Tenille Arts. But the Toronto country rock band never got on the U.S. charts with any of their 20-something Canadian hits. In fact I didn't hear their career-launching hit "Try" until recently when it popped up in an episode of the Canadian cult comedy series "Shoresy" and I went 'wait, that's a good song, what is that?' 

K.D. Lang is another Canadian artist, but one who eventually became pretty famous in the '90s as she transitioned out of country with "Constant Craving" and also came out of the closet. I really like her early country stuff, though, particularly "I'm Down to My Last Cigarette," co-written by songwriting legend Harlan Howard (who also penned Bobby Bare's "The Streets of Baltimore," which I recently wrote about).  

I thought about including Lyle Lovett's only country radio Top 10 hit, "Cowboy Man," but I decided to go with this gem, which crystallizes his loopy sense of humor so well, and has become one of his biggest streaming tracks over the years after a modest chart run. 

Country legend Loretta Lynn (born Loretta Webb) had seven siblings, three of whom also had musical career and chart hits. Her youngest sister, Crystal Gayle (born Brenda Gail Webb) was 18 years younger, and started racking up #1 singles in 1976 and 1977, as Loretta Lynn was releasing her last #1s. Crystal Gayle definitely has a more pop country sensibility, but I like her voice. "You Never Gave Up On Me" is from the same year that Gayle sang duets with Tom Waits for the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola's One From The Heart. 

Country rock fusions like the Eagles became a big business in the '70s. But by the '80s it doesn't seem like there was a whole lot of room in mainstream country or mainstream rock for people who operated in that gray area between the two genres until 'alt-rock' or 'Americana' became marketable in the '90s and beyond. The people that got closest to really thriving in that gray area in the '80s were the band Lone Justice and Steve Earle, a Texan who idolized Townes Van Zandt and had an uncomfortable alliance with the Nashville establishment. Earle's debut Guitar Town had two Top Ten hits on country radio, then the title track from his third album Copperhead Road was a Top Ten hit on the Mainstream Rock chart. And then, perhaps inevitably, Earle continued onward as a critical favorite, winning three Grammys in folk categories and getting occasional airplay on the Adult Album Alternative chart. 

I remember when Eddie Rabbit died in 1998 because, well, to be honest, that was the first I'd heard of him. I was surprised to learn that he had a #1 song on the Hot 100, albeit before I was born, but it was a good one. 

The two 1962 volumes of his Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music albums were a landmark moment in country's complex but often fertile relationship with the rest of American pop and Black music, and Ray Charles enjoyed a strong relationship with Nashville in the decades to follow. His most notable return to country was the 1984 album Friendship, which was his highest charting album between 1973 and 2004, and spun off a string of country radio hits featuring Willie Nelson, Hank Williams Jr., B.J. Thomas, and Mickey Gilley. 

Garth Brooks became a mainstream star pretty quickly after the release of his self-titled 1989 debut, but the album's first two hits "Much Too Young" and "If Tomorrow Never Comes" present this earnest young Oklahoman in the familiar mold of a George Strait-influenced neotraditionalist. I can't imagine anyone in 1989 having any idea that he would becoming arguably the biggest star country music has ever seen in the '90s, a bombastic master showman who headlined stadiums. And it happened pretty rapidly once the next decade started! 

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