Country Universe – A Country Music Blog

The 201 Greatest Singles of the Decade, Part 5: #120-#101

Friday, December 18th, 2009

The 201 Greatest Singles of the Decade, Part 5: #120-#101

#120
“Tonight I Wanna Cry”
Keith Urban
2005
Peak: #2

A chillingly frank portrait of loneliness, awkward reference to “All By Myself” notwithstanding. Few mainstream vocalists today could pull off something this intense. – Dan Milliken

#119
“Portland, Oregon”
Loretta Lynn with Jack White
2004
Peak: Did not chart

If you can take a healthy dose of dirty rock ‘n’ roll in your country, this is one of the coolest-sounding records of the decade, a classic one-night-stand duet. That it’s a very cross-generational pairing singing it would be creepy if not for the goofy smiles shining through Lynn’s and White’s performances. – DM (more…)

Discussion: Non-Hit Singles of the Decade

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Pop on those thinking caps; we’ve encountered a dilemma that Wikipedia alone cannot remedy!

See, like any warm-blooded entertainment blog, CU totally gets off on ranking stuff. So naturally, we’ve been hard at work piecing together our opinions on the decade’s finest albums and singles. The former category has proven easy enough to probe; the latter, however, presents a significant challenge, since singles that aren’t mainstream hits are often swept under the public carpet as the years go by.

I think it would be a shame to overlook some of the Aughts’ best work just because of our limited recall and research abilities, though, and I know our readers are diverse and knowledgeable enough to help us fill in the gaps. So I’m inviting everyone to name a bunch of their lesser-known favorites to help us broaden our selection pool (and have a little fun while we’re at it).

For example, my personal list would include:

• Nickel Creek, “When You Come Back Down”
• Dolly Parton, “Shine”
• Alison Krauss & Union Station, “Restless”
• Alison Krauss & James Taylor, “How’s The World Treating You”
• Loretta Lynn with Jack White, “Portland, Oregon”
• Old Crow Medicine Show, “Wagon Wheel”
• Ryan Adams, “Let It Ride”
• Pinmonkey, “That Train Don’t Run”
• Randy Rogers Band, “Somebody Take Me Home”
• Ashley Monroe, “Satisfied”
• Bruce Robison, “All Over But the Cryin’”
• Randy Travis, “Dig Two Graves”

And those are just some of the easy ones. But I’ll let y’all take over: What are some of your favorite non-hit singles from the past decade? Feel free to include anything from any classification of country – mainstream, Alt-Country/Americana, bluegrass, Texas, independent – and definitely include as many as you like, especially if you have a few that haven’t been mentioned yet. If it didn’t go Top 20 and was shipped to radio, it’s fair game!