“Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You”
Brooks & Dunn
Written by Rivers Rutherford and Tom Shapiro
Radio & Records
#1 (5weeks)
April 27 – May 25, 2001
Billboard
#1 (6 weeks)
April 28 – June 2, 2001
A big thing in the 2000s was the back to basics comeback.
We’d see it in pop with Madonna, Green Day, and Mariah Carey, who made late career classic albums by revamping their classic formula for modern audiences. And we saw it in country later in the decade with resets from George Strait and Alan Jackson.
Brooks & Dunn were an early example of this superstar revival approach. Everything about “Ain’t Nothing About You” is explicitly designed to revamp the B&D sound for 2001 radio while reminding fans why they fell in love with them in the first place. So we get an aggressive, in your face take on “Brand New Man” that replaces that song’s wide-eyed rediscovery of innocence with a hardened and gritty determination to love a woman, obstacles be damned.
It achieves its intended purpose, delivering an urgency on record that we hadn’t heard from Brooks & Dunn since their early days. They’ve got something to prove again, and they pull it off with a solid record that sets up better singles to come from their comeback set.
“Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You” gets a B+.
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It’s just ok to me. Maybe a “B-“. I am astonished that it spent 6 weeks at #1.
I always loved this one. It just explodes from the speakers and sounds like none of their other songs. It still has the usual B&D issue of Kix being nearly inaudible, but it’s such an exhilarating record to me because of its energy, distinctiveness, and overall declaration that B&D’s slump was over. They were back bigger and better than ever.
Of all of the early 2000s career resets, Brooks and Dunn’s was the most rewarding and comprehensive. They had hit a grand slam on their first at-bat with their 1991 debut but I thought they’d mostly been coasting on it for the rest of the 90s. Sure, there were a number of standouts in their middle-to-late 90s output but no pattern of continued excellence comparable to their debut. But in the aftermath of their lethargic “Tight Rope” effort, they got their swagger back in a way I didn’t see coming with “Steers and Stripes”. I didn’t know yet in early 2001 how consistent the album’s output would prove to be, but there was no question that the lead single was the highest-energy record they’d put out in quite a few years.
Kix and Ronnie were consistently candid about their behind-the-scenes squabbles on record choices. Ronnie said years earlier that he was a hard no at first about “My Maria” and would put up just as big of a fight in opposition to recording “Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You”, thinking it was too pop. I always found that characterization a bit odd since I thought the song fit right into their wheelhouse, but he conceded at year’s end that his instinct was wrong when “Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You” ranked as the #1 song of 2001 on Radio and Records. As you said, there were even better songs to come from “Steers and Stripes” and it sure was nice having the Brooks and Dunn I fell in love with back for the first time in nearly a decade.
Grade: B+
I loved Brooks & Dunn. They were one of my favorite country acts of the 90s and 00s.
However, when I look back on their catalog, this wasn’t a stand-out song for me. I don’t hate it, but compared to the high quality they normally put out, this was pretty mediocre.
I’d give it a B- or C+.
Brooks & Dunn catching up with themselves was very cool to watch and listen to.
Competence leads to confidence.
They somehow moved beyond their critics just by leaning into what their critics had railed at about them from the start.
Maybe they outlasted them.
When asked “Will the real Brooks & Dunn please step forward?”
They did with this hit.
I can’t deny this song lacks a punch a la Brand New Man, but it doesn’t quite have the same level of impact. However, lesser Brooks and Dunn songs still clear most artists for me, mainly because of how good of a singer Ronnie Dunn is. Give me more stripped down 2000s Brooks and Dunn (Believe, Red Dirt Road, Cost of Living from Dunn’s solo work).
I mainly prefer 90s Brooks & Dunn over 2000s Brooks & Dunn, but the Steers & Stripes era is one I came to appreciate later on. When “Ain’t Nothin’ ‘Bout You” first came out, I was pretty much “meh” about it at first. It was catchy, for sure, and it was nice having B&D back on the airwaves, but at the same time for me, it seemed like a bit of a step back compared to a lot of their 90s stuff, plus it was more pop sounding than I was used to hearing from them. I actually remained mostly indifferent with their Steers & Stripes singles until “Every River” came out in late 2002, which reminded me more of the 90s B&D I loved.
That all changed around 2009-2010 when I was revisiting and rediscovering a lot of early 2000s country that I either had not heard in a long time or was originally not as enthusiastic about. Part of what actually got me to check out and revisit the Steers & Stripes era was the fact that it was produced by Mark Wright, whose production style I was really enjoying when picking up other albums from the era like Trisha Yearwood’s Inside Out, Gary Allan’s Alright Guy, and both Lee Ann Womack’s I Hope You Dance and Something Worth Leaving Behind. When I picked up Steers & Stripes and listened to it, it’s like a switch went on, and I just finally got it. Now I finally understood why it was such a successful commercial return for Kix and Ronnie, and I found myself really enjoying the singles from it this time around, including “Ain’t Nothin’ Bout You.” This song was indeed a perfect way of reintroducing the guys to country radio in 2001 after their unfortunate slump with Tight Rope (which I actually love, but I’ll get to that later). It perfectly meshed their country rock style with the influence of early 2000s pop. It’s interesting learning from MarkMinnesota’s post that Ronnie was opposed to recording it at first, which I didn’t know. I can actually maybe see why he felt it was too pop, because if you take away the steel guitar and Ronnie’s twangy vocals, I hear a very pop sounding melody underneath it all. I can actually imagine this as a boy band or Britney Spears style pop song with different production and arrangements. However, the cool, flaming steel guitar licks and Ronnie’s powerful booming, growling vocals featuring his signature Oklahoma twang make it undeniably a country record. A slightly pop flavored country record, but country nonetheless. I agree with Kevin on Ronnie sounding much more energized here than he had in a while. The entire song from start to finish is just so pleasingly fun, energetic, and catchy. Plus, it keeps up with the early 2000s pre-9/11 trend of feel good songs, and it was just a perfect kind of song to be on the radio during the Spring and Summer of 2001.
Despite me being initially indifferent to “Ain’t Nothin’ Bout You,” when it came out, it was pretty clear that Brooks & Dunn were indeed back in a big way. I remember the DJs on our stations hyping up the Steers & Stripes album before it even came out, and I remember one of the female DJ’s saying that Kix and Ronnie were promising everyone that the new album was going to be really good and that it was going to make up for their slump. Around the Spring of 2001, one of our stations, 98.7 WMZQ, started doing what they called The Smackdown Rodeo every weeknight. It was basically your typical contest between two recent released songs in which listeners would call in to say which song they liked better by “roping it in” and then “smack down” the song they didn’t like. If I remember correctly, if the winning song successfully beat out at least three other songs in a row, it would then be crowned a Smackdown Rodeo Champion. “Ain’t Nothin’ Bout You” was the very first song to be crowned as such. It was a cool feature I enjoyed listening to every weeknight, though sometimes a bit frustrating if a song I liked lost or one I didn’t like won, lol.
I also remember when my step dad and I were watching the 2001 ACM Awards and Brooks & Dunn won the Duo award, we both laughed when Ronnie Dunn exclaimed to the audience “That was what you call a dip!” when referring to their slump, which likely included new rising duo, Montgomery Gentry, surprisingly taking home the Vocal Duo award at the CMA’s in 2000, ending their long streak at the time.
I actually happen to really enjoy the Tight Rope album, and think it’s too bad that it ended up being the album that ended their commercial momentum in the late 90s and in 2000. I think it’s a unique album from them in its own right. I like how it seemingly took the mid tempo Eagles style of country rock part of their sound and highlighted it even more and added some more modern/contemporary sounding late 90s style production to that sound. It actually includes some of my most favorite Kix led B&D songs ever such as “Don’t Look Back Now,” “The Trouble With Angels,” “I Love You More,” “Can’t Stop My Heart,” and “Texas And Norma Jean.” All of those cuts are just so smooth and very pleasing to the ear with catchy melodies and I think those feature some of the best and smoothest vocals Kix ever did. It’s too bad no more Kix songs were being sent to radio by then. I also enjoy a good number of the Ronnie led, Byron Gallimore produced songs such as “Too Far This Time,” “Goin’ Under Gettin’ Over You,” “You’ll Always Be Loved By Me,” and their cover of “Missing You.” I do admit that “Beer Thirty” felt too much like a retread and a weaker version of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” and other past honky tonkin’ hits from them, though.
And as I said above, I also really enjoy the Steers & Stripes album, and for me, it’s the last album they’ve released that I enjoy as a whole. Mark Wright certainly did a great job of updating their style for the early 2000s and adding some new sounds to their formula, as well. One of my favorites of the singles, “The Long Goodbye,” is especially such a great showcase of Wright’s creative, atmospheric production style from this era, imo, featuring what was the most pop influenced arrangement on a B&D record, yet. I also enjoy the cool Spanish flavored “My Heart Is Lost To You,” along with the Kim Richey penned “Every River” which I still really love (Richey’s own version on her Bitter Sweet album is also very lovely). Other favorites of mine on Steers & Stripes include “Go West,” “Lucky Me, Lonely You,” “The Last Thing I Do,” “Unloved,” and “When She’s Gone, She’s Gone.”