We’ve long been on record around these parts that the 1990s represented a second “golden” era for country music.
But it might be more accurate to refer to the 90s as country’s first platinum era: When the genre cemented a good dozen or more crossover superstars who didn’t just have name recognition but who actually sold records in massive numbers that were without meaningful precedent in the country universe. While it was a real sea change for Storms of Life to go triple platinum in the 1980s, that benchmark seems modest compared to what the likes of Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, The Chicks, Faith Hill, Kenny Chesney, LeAnn Rimes, Tim McGraw and so many others would sell just a few years later.
What’s perhaps most striking about the 1990s was how many artists arrived fully-formed on their debut albums. Both future superstars and influential critics’ darlings came out of the chute with albums of real depth in terms of the quality of the music and the establishment of a clear artistic identity. The 1990s really cemented country’s shift from a “singles” format to one driven by “albums artists,” and even legacy acts like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Dolly Parton dropped albums that were among the finest and most important of their legendary careers.
Still, it was the genre’s newcomers who were leading this charge. No surprise, then, that it’s the 90s that has the largest number of albums (and honorable mentions) in this feature.
The Greatest Debut Albums in Country Music: 1990s
Here in the Real World
Alan Jackson
Feb. 1990
There are some artists who arrive fully formed and spend the rest of their lengthy careers revising and expanding on the same template that they established on their debut album.
Alan Jackson’s one of the most enduring examples of this. There isn’t much of a difference in style, arrangement, or content between his first and last major label efforts. His songwriting matured with time, of course, but when you’re showing up with “Here in the Real World,” “I’d Love You All Over Again,” and “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow” the first time out, there isn’t much reason to deviate from what you started with. – KJC
No Depression
Uncle Tupelo
Jun. 1990
Acts like X, Lone Justice, The Wagoneers, The Primitives, and Chicken Truck had laid the foundation for the alt-country movement, but it’s the debut record from Uncle Tupelo that is most often credited as the watershed moment for country artists operating outside of the mainstream spaces. While the collaboration between Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar would prove short-lived– Uncle Tupelo survived scarcely half the decade before bifurcating into Wilco and Son Volt, both acts that continue to thrive– but their work together remains essential to the genre’s story in the 90s and beyond. No Depression is a record of such unimpeachable quality that it became the namesake of the magazine that still chronicles like-minded artists. – JK
Trisha Yearwood
Jul. 1991
Trisha Yearwood’s debut album is one of her least impressive albums. And it’s still one of the best debut albums in country music history.
She’s set the bar so high for so long that you could almost be unimpressed by her first effort, until you remember that the quartet of singles from it – “She’s in Love With the Boy,” “Like We Never Had a Broken Heart,” “That’s What I Like About You,” and “The Woman Before Me” – are the most impressive collection of singles that any debut female artist had given us on arrival before.
Her vocals were already beyond reproach, and her exquisite taste in material is already evident. She followed it up with Hearts in Armor one year later, raising the bar for herself and everyone else. But she was pretty damn good right out of the gate. – KJC
High & Dry
Marty Brown
Aug. 1991
The backdrop for the [cover] is a scrap of burlap. The photos is a stark one of a solitary farmhouse in a dry field.
Brand New Man
Brooks & Dunn
Aug. 1991
“Top to bottom perfect, like Brooks & Dunn’s debut album.”
When I heard Kane Brown sing that line, I thought, damn, she must be perfect.
Brooks & Dunn released five stone cold classics from their first album. I’ll go down swinging that their first single is still their best, but those who disagree with me are still likely to settle on “Neon Moon,” another hit from this set.
The fresh formula would be run into the ground with future releases, but this was a Hall of Fame worthy introduction to the most successful duo in country music history. – KJC
Infamous Angel
Iris DeMent
Oct. 1992
The arrival of a singular, truly inimitable talent. No one before or since has sounded quite like Iris. And that isn’t just a testament to her plaintive, strongly accented warble of a soprano. Infamous Angel introduced Iris DeMent as a voice of rare moral clarity. Her narratives are plainspoken and accessible, and it is her unshakable convictions that give her songs their power.
The melancholy single “Our Town” gave her the closest she’ll ever come to a hit record– its music video scored moderate rotation on CMT, and the song played over the closing scene of the Northern Exposure series finale– but she’s the kind of artist who has endured as a genuine treasure, if not a superstar. Thanks to an immortal Goo Goo Dolls hit that was named after her, though, “Iris” will always have a place in the canon. – JK
Between Midnight & Hindsight
Joy Lynn White
Oct. 1992
The album alternately smoulders and soars. It is one of those rare and special first listening experiences. Years later, I still feel the impact reverberating in my guts. A smile still slips across my face, and that memory is for good reason. Speaking several years after this debut, White said, “…if you give me a chance, I’ll knock ’em dead. I’ll step up to the plate every time; I’m an experienced singer.” In the liner notes, Holly Gleason said, “ What’s truly amazing is Joy White’s versatility. She can dig in and growl and she can kick back and sing with a purity of tone that recalls no less than Emmylou Harris’ early work.” – PS [Full Review]
Bobbie Cryner
Apr. 1993
The swampiest debut album to hit the scene since Bobby Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe, and it remains a sin that it didn’t get a similar reception. Bobbie Cryner’s thick southern drawl is perfectly matched with a production that drips with bayou humidity. “Daddy Laid the Blues On Me,” “I Think it’s Over Now,” “Leavin’ Houston Blues,” and “You Could Steal Me” established Cryner as a songwriter of remarkable vulnerability and depth. No wonder her writing credits would find their way to excellent releases from Trisha Yearwood, Suzy Bogguss, and Lee Ann Womack after Nashville blew their opportunity to make her a star. – KJC
Songs for the Daily Planet
Todd Snider
Oct. 1994
Co-Produced by Tony Brown and Michael Utley, Snider’s 1994 debut Songs For the Daily Planet is a revelation, a window into another alternative world of country music. Snider’s irreverent personality, social satire and penchant for breaking your heart had no Nashville equal…
Including the hidden track, all 13 album cuts were songs he had previously worked at The Daily Planet. In the liner notes Snider quips, “The Daily Planet was the excuse for the song on this album. There is no actual excuse for the actual album itself.”
Thankfully, the album does not need an excuse. It’s as outrageously bold an artistic statement as was made in country music in the 90’s. The influences of songwriter’s songwriters like John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark, Bobby Bare, and Shel Silverstein were all over the album. – PS [Full review]
Kim Richey
May 1995
My personal pick for the best debut album of the nineties, a choice that is validated by the album functioning almost like a demo for the genre’s strongest female artists. You’ve heard songs on Kim Richey sung by Trisha Yearwood, Suzy Bogguss, Mindy McCready, Lorrie Morgan, and Patty Loveless, but you haven’t truly heard them at all until you hear them in the context of this flawless, skip-free, and joyously jangly album.
It’s a tribute to Richey’s talent as a vocalist that it doesn’t even sound like a songwriter’s demo. As good as the first albums from Matraca Berg and Gretchen Peters were, I’d still say the covers of songs from those sets are stronger than the songwriter’s original recordings.
But Richey’s evocative, haunting vocals give the collection a cohesion and the individual songs a potency that makes this the best place to hear them, a remarkable feat given the women listed above who also recorded “Those Words We Said,” “From Where I Stand,” “You’ll Never Know,” “Here I Go Again,” and “That’s Exactly What I Mean.” – KJC
Living with Ghosts
Patty Griffin
May 1996
Patty Griffin’s talents were so immediately apparent that her debut album, after some back-and-forth with her label execs, was actually just a barely-touched copy of her demo tape. Armed with just her acoustic guitar and a voice of unrivaled grit, power, and soul, Griffin provided an instant reminder of how little embellishment is really needed for a country song to hit like a freight train.
As with Kim Richey’s debut, the songs on Living with Ghosts have been covered countless times, with perhaps only The Chicks and Emmylou Harris– certainly neither Jessica Simpson nor Bette Midler– approaching the depths of Griffin’s originals. – JK
Wide Open Spaces
The Chicks
Jan. 1998
All respect to the late Laura Lynch, but the original incarnation of The Dixie Chicks made music that was both very good but very niche. Wide Open Spaces represents the debut of what is really and truly an entirely new artist; their eventual name change to The Chicks certainly helps make for a clean break between the two incarnations.
The press engaged in a litany of sexist tropes that compared this trio to a “country Spice Girls.” And while I’m enough of a recovering poptimist that I’ll still go to bat for a couple of Spice Girls single, that comparison is wildly off-base in both directions and always was. The Chicks of Wide Open Spaces foregrounded their own agency and their spectacular talents as musicians– two sisters of uncommon technical virtuosity and a new frontwoman with a long-range missile launcher of a voice.
The album announced them as first-rate songwriters (“You Were Mine” remains one of the best ballads of its era) and interpreters of unerring taste. We’ve highlighted Joy Lynn White’s debut here, and I’ve said many times that there are no Chicks as we know them without White’s influence: Her brash delivery style and choices of material were all over Natalie Maines’ work right from the jump. – JK
The Captain
Kasey Chambers
May 1999
“Well I never lived through The Great Depression / But sometimes I feel as though I did.”
Now there’s an all-timer of an opening line, and that’s how Kasey Chambers introduced herself to the world. She’s spent the remainder of her career making good on the promise of that opening salvo, bringing a perspective that is both finely tuned to the world at large while also standing just out of step with it.
Like so many great artists who emerged in the 90s, Chambers’ early singles got some good traction at CMT, which gave a level of meaningful exposure to “The Captain” and “Cry Like a Baby” even if they couldn’t have sounded more different from the Lonestar and Jo Dee Messina hits of the day. The Captain proved that the music that would come to be dubbed “Americana” didn’t have to originate in the US of A. – JK
Honorable Mentions:
The Bottle Rockets
BR5-49
Bloomed, Richard Buckner
Too Cold At Home, Mark Chesnutt
Diamond Rio
Gangstabilly, Drive-By Truckers
Take Me As I Am, Faith Hill
The Time Has Come, Martina McBride
Alabama Song, Allison Moorer
Hitchhike to Rhome, Old 97s
Clay Walker
Lead Me Not, Lari White
Living with the Law, Chris Whitley
Well Traveled Love, Kelly Willis
The Greatest Debut Albums in Country Music
Introduction
Part One: 1960s & 1970s
Part Two: 1980s
Part Three: 1990s
Part Four: 21st Century
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