Country Music

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JOHN ANDERSON THOUGHT HE MIGHT NEVER SING AGAIN. THEN DAN AUERBACH HELPED HIM MAKE THE ALBUM HE FEARED COULD BE HIS LAST. In 2017, John Anderson went through a serious health crisis. For months, the man behind “Swingin’” and “Seminole Wind” could barely hear. He did not know if he would ever sing properly again. Then Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys entered his life. Auerbach and veteran producer David Ferguson brought Anderson into the studio, not to remake him for a younger audience, but to write new songs around the voice and life he already had. The sessions became Years. Anderson was still uncertain about his health. He later admitted that he told Auerbach and Ferguson the record might be his last. Instead, making it helped him heal. Released in 2020, Years became John Anderson’s first studio album in five years, with Blake Shelton joining him on “Tuesday I’ll Be Gone.” A country legend who had wondered whether he would ever sing again had found his voice. And at 65, he still had something left to say.

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John Anderson Thought He Might Never Sing Again. Then Dan Auerbach Helped Him Make the Album He Feared Could Be…

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HE SPENT YEARS OPENING SHOWS FOR CHARLEY PRIDE, LEARNING HOW TO WIN OVER CROWDS WHO HADN’T COME TO SEE HIM. THEN NEAL McCOY FINALLY HIT NO. 1 — TWICE IN THE SAME YEAR. Before Nashville knew his name, Neal McCoy spent years on the road opening concerts for Charley Pride. Night after night, he watched from the wings as Pride talked to audiences, made them laugh and turned strangers into fans. McCoy learned that a singer could not simply walk onstage and expect people to care. He had to earn them. McCoy signed with Atlantic in 1990, but his first two albums failed to produce a major breakthrough. Then came 1994. “No Doubt About It” reached No. 1. A few months later, “Wink” followed and stayed there for four weeks. After years of opening for somebody else, McCoy finally had crowds coming to hear him. But he never forgot the man he had studied from the side of the stage. Years later, McCoy recorded an entire tribute album to Charley Pride. The star had finally become the headliner. The student never forgot his teacher.

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How Neal McCoy Learned to Win Over a Crowd Before Neal McCoy became a country star with his own hits,…

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THE SON OF A FILIPINO IMMIGRANT GREW UP IN EAST TEXAS. YEARS LATER, NEAL McCOY BECAME A BILLBOARD COUNTRY NO. 1 STAR — TWICE. Neal McCoy was born Hubert Neal McGaughey Jr. in Jacksonville, Texas. His mother, Virginia, was born in the Philippines. His father was American. Long before Nashville noticed him, Neal sang in Texas clubs and learned how to hold a crowd. Then Charley Pride entered his life. After winning a talent contest, McCoy eventually became Pride’s opening act and spent years learning from one of country music’s greatest barrier-breakers. Success still came slowly. McCoy signed with 16th Avenue Records in 1988, then Atlantic in 1990. Several singles passed without a major breakthrough. Then 1994 changed everything. “No Doubt About It” reached No. 1. “Wink” followed and stayed there four weeks. The son of a Filipino mother had gone from East Texas clubs to the top of the country chart. Neal McCoy never needed to make his heritage a marketing slogan. He simply walked onto country stages and proved he belonged there.

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Neal McCoy’s Quiet Road to the Top of Country Music Before Neal McCoy became a two-time Billboard country No. 1…

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LORETTA LYNN HADN’T HAD AN ALBUM REACH NO. 2 ON THE COUNTRY CHART IN 27 YEARS. AT 72, A 28-YEAR-OLD ROCK STAR HELPED HER DO IT ONE MORE TIME. By 2004, Loretta Lynn had already spent more than four decades in country music. Her last album to climb as high as No. 2 on Billboard’s country album chart had been I Remember Patsy back in 1977. Then Jack White came into the picture. The 28-year-old White Stripes frontman did not ask Loretta to sound younger. He produced Van Lear Rose and encouraged her to return to what had always made her special: writing plainly about her own life. The result sounded unmistakably like Loretta, only with a rawer edge. Released in 2004, Van Lear Rose debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and reached No. 24 on the Billboard 200. Then came the Grammys. Loretta and Jack won for “Portland, Oregon,” and Van Lear Rose won Best Country Album. At 72, Loretta Lynn did not need a young rock star to make her relevant again. He simply helped a new generation hear what had been there all along.

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Loretta Lynn and Jack White: The Album That Made an Icon Feel New Again By 2004, Loretta Lynn had already…

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FORGET “CHISELED IN STONE.” FORGET “SET ‘EM UP JOE.” THE SONG THAT TRULY DEFINED VERN GOSDIN WAS THE FIFTH SINGLE OFF AN ALBUM NOBODY WAS PUSHING — ON A LABEL YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF. Everyone knows Gosdin for “Chiseled in Stone” — CMA Song of the Year, 1989. Many remember “Set ‘Em Up Joe.” But neither showed the man who had already quit music once and meant it. In October 1982, a small label called AMI released the fifth single from the same album — something labels almost never did. Gosdin was 48. A decade earlier he’d been selling glassware door to door in Atlanta. He wrote it with Mark Wright, later one of Nashville’s biggest producers. The lyric follows a man leaving a divorce courtroom and walking straight into a church. It wasn’t about losing a woman. It was about a man with nothing left who kneels anyway — the same stubbornness that drove him back to Nashville after everyone wrote him off. Some singers are handed their signature song. Gosdin wrote his, watched it stall at No. 10 — and waited fifteen years for George Strait to take it to No. 3. Have you heard Vern’s original — or did you only ever know George Strait’s version?

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Forget the Hits Everyone Remembers: Vern Gosdin’s Real Signature Was “Today My World Slipped Away” Most country fans know Vern…

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WHEN EMMYLOU HARRIS WROTE THE SONG THAT DEFINED HER CAREER, SHE NEVER SAID HIS NAME IN IT. Gram Parsons found her singing in Washington, D.C. bars in the early 1970s and put her on both of his solo albums. Then, on September 19, 1973, he died in a motel room near Joshua Tree, California. He was twenty-six. Harris later said the news felt like falling off a mountain. She had not written a song since her forgotten 1969 debut. This time she wrote the words herself and handed them to Bill Danoff — a friend from the D.C. clubs who had co-written “Take Me Home, Country Roads” — to set to music. That became “Boulder to Birmingham,” the only writing credit she had on her 1975 album Pieces of the Sky. It was never released as a single. The hit off that record was a Louvin Brothers cover, “If I Could Only Win Your Love,” which went to No. 4 country. Fifty years later, “Boulder to Birmingham” is the song people still ask her to sing. Gram Parsons is not named anywhere in it.

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When Emmylou Harris Wrote the Song That Defined Her Career, She Never Said His Name There are songs that arrive…

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COUNTRY RADIO THOUGHT DOLLY PARTON’S SONG WAS TOO SUGGESTIVE TO PLAY. SOME STATIONS DROPPED IT — AND SHE TOOK IT TO NO. 1 ANYWAY. In January 1975, Dolly Parton released “The Bargain Store,” a song built around a simple metaphor: a woman comparing her heart to a secondhand shop after being hurt in love. She was not saying she was worthless. She was saying the opposite — that even after heartbreak, there was still something valuable left to give. But some country programmers heard the song differently. The repeated references to prices, buying and merchandise were interpreted by some as having a sexual meaning. A number of stations removed the record from their playlists. Dolly did not rewrite the song or soften the message. She let the listeners decide what it meant. They understood. On March 29, 1975, “The Bargain Store” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart. Some radio programmers thought the metaphor had gone too far. The audience simply heard a woman saying heartbreak had not destroyed her value.

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Country Radio Thought Dolly Parton’s Song Was Too Suggestive to Play. Dolly Parton Took It to No. 1 Anyway. In…

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THE CMA BROADCAST MUTED ONE LINE OF HER SONG ON LIVE TELEVISION. ONE YEAR LATER, THAT SAME SONG WON CMA SONG OF THE YEAR. On November 6, 2013, Kacey Musgraves walked onto the CMA Awards stage to perform “Follow Your Arrow,” a song she had written with Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally. The song was unusually direct for country radio. It told people to stop living by everyone else’s judgment, whether that meant drinking or not drinking, marrying or staying single, kissing a boy or a girl. Then came the line about marijuana. As Musgraves reached the words “roll up a joint,” the television broadcast muted the lyric. Viewers saw her singing, but they did not hear the controversial words. Musgraves did not rewrite the song. She kept performing it exactly as she had written it. Then, on November 5, 2014, she returned to the CMA Awards. This time, nobody muted “Follow Your Arrow.” The song that had been censored on the same awards show one year earlier was named CMA Song of the Year.

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The Night Kacey Musgraves Sang What Television Wouldn’t Air On November 6, 2013, Kacey Musgraves stepped onto the CMA Awards…

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HE WASN’T JEALOUS OF THE MAN SHE CHOSE. HE JUST KNEW WHICH ROOMS HE’D NEVER BE ASKED BACK INTO. “Crystal Chandeliers” isn’t a jealousy song. It’s a song about class — about standing inside a beautiful room and understanding, quietly, that you are the only thing in it that doesn’t belong. Look at what he notices. Not her. The chandeliers. The marble floor. The velvet. The polished glasses in other men’s hands. A man who is heartbroken watches the woman. A man who has been placed watches the furniture. Everything in that room is exactly where it should be. Except him. This is for anyone who has ever been invited somewhere and spent the whole evening waiting to be found out. The one who was welcomed politely and never asked back. And that’s the cruel part. Not that she left. That she moved into a life he was allowed to visit but never enter. Sometimes losing someone means learning exactly where the world had filed you all along. If you walked into a room tonight where everyone was courteous and nobody was glad you came — would you stay for the second song?

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Crystal Chandeliers and the Quiet Wound of Being Outside “Crystal Chandeliers” has often been remembered as a country standard written…

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FOR BETTER OR WORSE. ON THEIR 31ST WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, DENISE GOT THE CANCER CALL — AND ALAN JACKSON FINALLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT THOSE FOUR WORDS REALLY MEANT. In 1979, Alan Jackson married Denise in a small church in Newnan, Georgia. He was nineteen. She was seventeen. They stood across from each other and made a promise neither of them fully understood yet. The years that followed gave Alan everything a country boy from Georgia could dream of — forty-four number ones, awards that filled the shelves, arenas full of strangers singing his words like prayers. He spent decades putting the right words to other people’s feelings. But a vow isn’t a lyric. You don’t write it once and walk away. You live it. And living it is harder than any song he ever wrote. Then, in 2010, Denise was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. And suddenly, the awards went quiet. The records didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the woman sitting across from him in a doctor’s office — the same woman who had stood across from him in that small church thirty-one years before. Alan once said that was the moment the vow finally made sense. Not the part about the good days. Anyone can keep a promise when life is kind. The real promise lives in the worst days — the ones where you sit under fluorescent lights holding someone’s hand and tomorrow becomes a question no one can answer. Denise fought. She beat it. And when she came through the other side, she wrote a book — not about victory, but about faith. About the kind of love that reveals itself only when everything else is stripped away. Forty-six years now. Three daughters. Four grandchildren. A life that was never as loud as the stages, but always more real. Some promises are made in a moment. Theirs took a lifetime to understand.

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For Better or Worse: What Alan Jackson Learned on His 31st Wedding Anniversary In 1979, Alan Jackson married Denise in…

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