The albums that end perfectly, summing up everything that’s come before, but also peaking with the last track.
Mary Chapin Carpenter, “This is Love”, from Stones in the Road.
Garth Brooks, “Face to Face”, from The Chase.
Wynonna, “Rescue Me”, from What the World Needs Now is Love.
Keith Urban, “Everybody”, from Love, Pain and the Whole Crazy Thing.
Kathy Mattea, “Black Lung”, from Coal.
Trisha Yearwood, “Heart’s in Armor”, from Hearts in Armor.
Emmylou Harris, “Cup of Kindness”, from Stumble into Grace.
Alison Krauss & Union Station, “A Living Prayer”, from Lonely Runs Both Ways.
And my favorite, all-time closing track. Dixie Chicks. “Top of the World.” From Home. When the song ended, I said, “Wow. That’s the best album I’ve heard in years.” My friend Charlie said, “Kevin, you say that about every record when it first comes out.” I said, “No, seriously dude. I mean it this time.”
I took a big chunk of the great ones, but there are a lot more out there. What do you think is the best album closer?
I’m absolutely loving the video for Lee Ann Womack’s “Last Call”, which CMT recently premiered on its site. It follows the song’s plot closely, but the surprise for me was how the director Trey Fanjoy shot New York so beautifully. I know very little about film technique, so I guess I’m limited to saying, “Hey, that looks really cool!”
But as a New Yorker myself, I love it when I can see my city through fresh eyes. It’s easy to take the city’s beauty for granted, having been born and raised here. I’m a little spoiled, as I can see the skyline from my front porch. It really wasn’t until college, when my friends from other parts of the country came to visit, that I was able to see the city in a different light.
I love it when country videos are filmed here. Sure, it’s fun when they play up the juxtaposition of country and city, like in the classic Ricky Skaggs clip “Country Boy”, but I like it even better when things are played naturally. It makes total sense to see Ryan Adams rocking out in Brooklyn with lower Manhattan in the background in “New York, New York.” Rodney Crowell & Rosanne Cash look right at home as old lovers running into each other in SoHo during their clip for “It’s Such a Small World.” An upscale hotel and a stroll through brownstones seemed perfectly fitting for the Dixie Chicks in “You Were Mine.”
But there’s something really special about the way they filmed NYC for the Womack video. I hope it gets the heavy rotation it deserves.
There are some albums that start off perfectly, either by beginning with the best song, or setting the perfect mood for the record.
You only need to hear that one synthesizer lick of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” to know that you’re listening to Come On Over.
Those few ominous guitar strings of “Time of the Preacher” set up Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger perfectly.
“Inside the pocket of a clown. Ooh waa. Ooh waa. Ooh waa. Ooh waa.” Dwight Yoakam’s This Time.
My favorite opening track is tough to pick, but I’m going with Todd Snider’s “Age Like Wine”, from his East Nashville Skyline album. “Old timer, old timer, too late to die young now.” In under two minutes, he says more than some singer-songwriters do on a whole album. Love it.
When Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley honored the memory of Eddy Arnold at the 2008 ACM Awards, they did so by performing his classic hit, “Make the World Go Away.” Arnold is the most successful singles artist in country music history, but even among his deep catalog of timeless hits, “Make the World Go Away” was his signature tune.
What’s amazing is that Arnold wasn’t even the first artist to have a hit with the song. Hank Cochran had already established himself as one of Nashville’s top songwriters by the time he wrote “Make the World Go Away.” It was only fitting that he would offer his stellar new song to an A-list artist, which in 1963, meant Ray Price, not Eddy Arnold. Price took the song to No. 2 on the country charts in 1963, and it dented the pop charts, peaking at No. 100.
Even though Price’s version didn’t entrance the pop world, the song was tailor-made for that format. Later that year, pop singer Timi Yuro had a moderate hit with it, taking the song to No. 24 on the Hot 100. But the song’s life was only just beginning. Eddy Arnold ‘s career had been in a lull, but in 1965, he made a big comeback with “What’s He Doing in My World”, his first No. 1 hit in ten years. This led to the album My World, which was anchored by that hit single.
Releasing multiple songs from one album was still a rarity in that era, but RCA sensed that the album housed another hit: “I’m Letting You Go.” However, the song stalled at No. 15 on the country chart. Conventional wisdom would’ve suggested moving on to the next set, not releasing a cover of a hit from two years ago, but RCA sent out “Make the World Go Away” anyway, and it was a smash. It topped the country singles chart, was a top ten pop hit, and helped make My World Arnold’s first gold album. In the wake of the song’s success, Arnold was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and named the very first CMA Entertainer of the Year.
Arnold’s version of “Make the World Go Away” became a standard, even though he was the third artist to have a hit with it. The sweeping strings were a perfect match for his pure vocal, a definitive example of the Nashville Sound done right. Though the song has also been recorded by Elvis Presley, Englebert Humperdink, Donny & Marie Osmond and Martina McBride, it is Arnold’s recording of the song that is in the Grammy Hall of Fame, the most significant single in a career full of classics.
There’s an essential truth forming the foundation of Kenny Chesney’s new single: we all want to go to Heaven, but we don’t want to go today. I enjoyed the lyric, which I initially dismissed as a slow-paced retread of “Living in Fast Forward”, but eventually slipped in a little satire about church collections.
What holds this record back is the production. The calypso trimmings used to be a distinctive trademark of Kenny Chesney records, but by now, they’re a crutch. It’s a feel that doesn’t the song, and it brings down the entire record.
This was suggested in the comments yesterday by Charlie, and seconded by Philly Jeff. I was going to wait a few days before revisiting music videos, then I remembered this Kenny Rogers clip and I couldn’t resist:
There’s mine. What do you think is the worst country music video ever?
There are few artists in country music history who were adept in as many diverse styles as Marty Robbins. He could nail a traditional honky-tonk number, then deliver as pure a pop melody as anyone on the hit parade. He was also a tremendously accomplished songwriter, and the song that he was most identified with came from his own pen: the epic Western tale “El Paso.”
In an era when most songs were under three minutes long, “El Paso” ran nearly five. It told the tale of a gunslinging cowboy who falls for a Mexican cantina dancer Feleena, who is working in the Texas city of El Paso. One night, he guns down a rival for her affections, and flees the scene on a stolen horse. He races through the badlands of New Mexico, fleeing the authorities. But rather than stay on the run, he returns to El Paso, singing that “my love is stronger than my fear of death.”
As he approaches Rosa’s Cantina, he is surrounded by a swarm of mounted cowboys. He sees the smoke from the rifle, and feels the bullet goes deep in his chest. Then, as he is dying on the ground, Feleena appears by his side, giving him one final kiss as he dies in her arms.
“El Paso” was a high-water mark for Country & Western music, a moniker the genre would shed by the end of the sixties, as songs befitting the latter half became increasingly scarce. Robbins never limited himself to Western themes, but “El Paso” forever associated him with that style. In addition to being one of his longest-running No. 1 country singles, it topped the Hot 100 pop chart as well. Robbins won a Grammy for Best Country & Western Performance for the hit in 1960.
Over the course of his career, Robbins would revisit the storyline and themes of “El Paso” repeatedly, beginning with the concept album that accompanied “El Paso,” Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. He told Feleena’s backstory in 1966, with the eight-minute “Feleena (From El Paso).” In the mid-seventies, he was inspired to write “El Paso City” as he flew over the town on an airplane. It recounted the story in third-person, from the perspective of a man who believes he is the reincarnate of the gunslinger in the original song. It was released in 1976, seventeen years after the original hit, and was a #1 country hit.
Meanwhile, “El Paso” built a legacy of its own. The Grateful Dead began performing it in 1969, and would do so hundreds of times over the next three decades, as it was their most requested song of all time. The city of El Paso also embraced the song, as it became the Fight song for The University of Texas at El Paso Miners. In 1998, the single was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and it remains the signature song of Robbins, a revered musical legend in his own right.
CMT is running the second edition of their 100 Greatest Music Videos list. I don’t have the five hours to watch it, but I’m recording it so I can enjoy it in small doses later on.
I’m from the video age, and I discovered most of my favorite artists through CMT, back when it ran videos 24/7. It’s hard to believe, but I became an Emmylou Harris fan after seeing her video for “Thanks To You”, which wasn’t exactly a radio hit.
I like videos that are a little off the beaten path, and while I love a big-budget pop video, there’s a charm to the way that country videos were creative with their meager resources back then. Here’s an example of one of those videos that I thought was cool when I was a kid, and still appreciate today:
It’s been called the greatest country single of all time, sung by the genre’s greatest vocalist. But while it was an enormous hit, becoming George Jones’ biggest record and signature song, it was surrounded by doubts before its release.
The song was about a man who carried a flame for a woman who had left him behind, vowing, “I’ll love you ’til I die.” Told from the point of view of the man’s friend, the various ways he holds on to her memory are documented. Just before the chorus, it seems like the lovesick fool has finally turned it around, as his friend recounts, “I went to see him just today. Oh, but I didn’t see no tears. All dressed up to go away. First time I’d seen him smile in years.” Then the chorus brings the kicker: the man kept his word, and loved her until the day that he died. “Soon they’ll carry him away. He stopped loving her today.”
The song was co-written by Bobby Braddock & Curly Putman, and had its origin in off-color funeral humor, before taking a serious turn as the songwriting progressed. Johnny Russell recorded it first, but his label refused to release it. At the time, the song ended after the first chorus. When Billy Sherrill heard it, he knew it was perfect for George Jones, who was in need of a comeback hit after some serious personal struggles. Sherrill requested that another verse be added, which took the form of the woman he loved attending his funeral.
As the producer recounted to Tom Roland in The Billboard Book of Number One Country Hits, Jones didn’t want to record the song, and when he cut it, he said, “Nobody will by that morbid S.O.B.” Sherrill bet Jones $100 that he was wrong, and recalled, “I won that one hands down.”
The song was a massive hit, returning Jones to prominence on the country hit parade. It was his first solo #1 single in nearly six years. Until then, he’d only had gold albums with Tammy Wynette, but “He Stopped Loving Her Today” propelled the album I Am What i Am to platinum status. After twenty-five years on the charts, “Today” earned Jones his first major accolades from the country music industry. It was named Single of the Year by both the CMA and the ACM, and both organizations named Jones their Male Vocalist. Jones also won his first Grammy for the recording.
The songwriters weren’t left out of the festivities, either. The CMA named “He Stopped Loving Her Today” Song of the Year twice – in 1980 and in 1981. It was also named Song of the Year by the ACM, and was nominated for Best Country Song at the Grammys. It has since become a country music standard, a tour de force performance by the man who is most often cited as the greatest country music vocalist in history.
You know what’s fun? Accidentally erasing your iPod! I’m already hours into refilling it, and i still have more than 4,000 songs to go.
Anyway, looking at all of the songs reminds me of just how long I’ve been a country music fan. There used to be a radio station in New York City with a daily feature called “Country Convert Song.” Listeners would call the station and share the song that made them a country music fan.
Now, I’ve been surrounded by country music for as long as I can remember. My parents were huge fans. Their song was Billie Jo Spears’ “Blanket on the Ground.” Long car trips were dominated by mix tapes of Marty Robbins, Tammy Wynette, Ronnie Milsap, Reba McEntire, Johnny Cash, John Conlee and Conway Twitty.
But even though I liked some of the songs, it was definitely mom and dad’s music. Then, when I was in sixth grade, a show called Hot Country Nights was on television. My mom insisted we watch it, and this was back in the “no cable and only one tv and it’s in the living room” days. She was excited to see Ricky Van Shelton or Kenny Rogers or something.
Out came one of the new country stars of the early nineties, debuting her new single. Readers won’t be shocked by who it was. I remember watching Pam Tillis sing “Maybe it Was Memphis” and it was like an epiphany. Music can be this good? Really?
From that point on, whenever we spent our weekends in Pennsylvania, I would be glued to CMT day and night. Seventeen years later, it’s still the music I listen to the most.
Too late to be a long story short, but that’s my country convert song: Pam Tillis, “Maybe it Was Memphis.” What was yours?
El Paso
He Stopped Loving Her Today
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