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Country Music

JOE DIFFIE HAD BEEN OFF THE CENTER OF COUNTRY RADIO FOR YEARS. THEN JASON ALDEAN RELEASED A SONG THAT HAD AN ENTIRE NEW GENERATION CHANTING HIS NAME. In 1994, Joe Diffie was near the height of his career. “Third Rock from the Sun” reached No. 1. Then “Pickup Man” followed and stayed there four weeks. Jason Aldean was still a high-school junior in Georgia, listening to Diffie and playing songs from that era before his own career existed. Aldean later remembered attending a Macon festival where roughly 5,000 people gathered for Diffie while only a few hundred watched a young Kenny Chesney on another stage. Almost two decades passed. By 2012, Aldean had become one of country music’s biggest stars. Songwriters Thomas Rhett, Luke Laird and Barry Dean were working on another song when the session changed direction. They built a track around 1990s nostalgia, filling it with references to Diffie records including “Pickup Man,” “John Deere Green,” “Third Rock from the Sun” and “Honky Tonk Attitude.” They called it “1994.” Aldean heard the demo while songs were being pitched for him and asked to hear it again. Soon afterward, he recorded it for Night Train. It became the album’s third single in March 2013. Diffie had nothing to do with making the record. Then he heard what they had done. His name had become the chant at the center of the song. Diffie said he was initially stunned, then realized what it meant: thousands of younger Aldean fans would suddenly be shouting the name of a singer whose biggest records had been released when many of them were children—or not yet born. The effect followed him off the radio. Diffie later said younger people began showing up at his concerts wanting to find out who the man from “1994” actually was. What surprised him even more was that many had gone backward into his catalog and learned the older songs. He called the attention a “shot in the arm.” Aldean had grown up playing Joe Diffie songs in Georgia clubs. Years later, some of Aldean’s own fans discovered those same records by moving in the opposite direction—starting with Jason Aldean and working their way back to Joe.

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Country Music

LITTLE JIMMY DICKENS STOOD 4’11”. TRACE ADKINS STOOD 6’6″. SO WHEN DICKENS CAME OUT TO INVITE HIM INTO THE GRAND OLE OPRY, HE BROUGHT A STEPLADDER. By 2003, Trace Adkins was no longer the unknown Louisiana singer who had arrived in Nashville a decade earlier. He had built a run of country hits, and the Grand Ole Opry had been part of that journey since his debut there on November 23, 1996. Then came June 14, 2003. Adkins had finished his set at the Opry and was preparing to leave the stage when Little Jimmy Dickens appeared in a bright blue Nudie suit. He was carrying a stepladder. Dickens was only 4’11”. Adkins towered over him at 6’6″. So Dickens set down the ladder, climbed the steps until the two men were nearly eye-to-eye, and asked Adkins how badly he wanted to become part of the Grand Ole Opry family. The joke landed immediately. But the invitation underneath it was real. Adkins accepted, and when the time came for his formal induction, he was allowed to choose the Opry member he wanted to welcome him into the family. He chose Ronnie Milsap, one of his musical heroes. On August 23, 2003, Milsap officially inducted Trace Adkins into the Grand Ole Opry. Twenty years later, Adkins returned to the same stage to celebrate the anniversary. This time the significance had moved beyond the joke that began it. He said Opry membership had affected the way he conducted himself because he felt responsible for representing the institution. And the tradition kept moving forward. In 2018, Adkins walked onto that stage unexpectedly during Dustin Lynch’s set and asked another country singer to join the Opry family. Little Jimmy Dickens had once come out to get Trace Adkins. Fifteen years later, Trace was the man being sent out to get the next one

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Country Music

THE ALBUM NEVER CAME OUT. THE LABEL RELATIONSHIP ENDED. BUT ONE SONG FROM THOSE SHELVED SESSIONS ESCAPED WITH TRACY LAWRENCE—AND BECAME HIS FIRST TOP 5 HIT IN FOUR YEARS. By the early 2000s, Tracy Lawrence was no longer riding the country-radio streak that had made him one of the defining voices of the 1990s. After Atlantic closed its Nashville division, Lawrence moved to Warner Bros. and recorded another project there. But the album never came out. Lawrence later described the period as frustrating and personally draining, a time when he was struggling to recover his enthusiasm for the business. Among those Warner recordings was “Paint Me a Birmingham,” written by Buck Moore and Gary Duffy. Then Lawrence left Warner. He signed with DreamWorks Nashville in 2003, where he reunited with James Stroud. But while the paperwork surrounding Lawrence’s move was still being sorted out, another country singer, Ken Mellons, released his own version of “Paint Me a Birmingham.” Suddenly there were two versions of the same song headed toward country radio. Lawrence and DreamWorks moved quickly. His recording was released in October 2003, and the two versions entered the country chart within a week of each other. Lawrence’s began pulling ahead in airplay. By May 2004, “Paint Me a Birmingham” had reached No. 4 on Billboard’s country chart—Lawrence’s first Top 5 hit since “Lessons Learned” four years earlier. The recording became the centerpiece of Strong, an album assembled largely from material originally cut for the Warner project that never reached stores. And the song developed a life larger than its chart peak. Lawrence later said he could feel from the stage that “Paint Me a Birmingham” had become one of those records whose connection with audiences was bigger than its No. 4 ranking suggested. Years after the label turmoil had disappeared into career history, it remained one of the songs most closely identified with him. The abandoned Warner sessions therefore left behind something Lawrence could not have known at the time. Not another unreleased album. A song he would still be singing decades later.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” THE ALBUM NEVER CAME OUT. THE LABEL RELATIONSHIP…

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“THREE CHORDS AND THE TRUTH.” HARLAN HOWARD REDUCED COUNTRY MUSIC TO FIVE WORDS — THEN SPENT MORE THAN FORTY YEARS PROVING THEM WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S VOICES. Harlan Howard never needed complicated language to explain what he believed a country song should do. He had grown up listening to Ernest Tubb on the Grand Ole Opry, sometimes writing down lyrics as they came through the radio. If his hand fell behind, he would invent the missing lines himself. Long before Nashville knew his name, Howard was already learning that a song had to tell its story quickly and clearly. Eventually he gave that instinct a definition: “Three chords and the truth.” By the time Howard reached Nashville in 1960, the formula was already working. Charlie Walker had taken “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down” to No. 2. Ray Price had done the same with “Heartaches by the Number,” while Guy Mitchell’s pop version went to No. 1. Then the songs began appearing everywhere. Howard and Hank Cochran wrote “I Fall to Pieces,” which Patsy Cline initially resisted recording with Owen Bradley’s polished Nashville Sound arrangement. Released in 1961, it eventually became her first No. 1 country single. Howard wrote “Busted.” Ray Charles carried it to No. 4 on the pop chart in 1963. He co-wrote “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” with Buck Owens, helping produce another defining Bakersfield hit. Then came artists and generations that had not even entered the business when Howard started: The Judds recorded “Why Not Me.” Patty Loveless took “Blame It on Your Heart” to No. 1 in 1993. Howard made records himself, but he never seriously chased stardom as a performer. The songs were the career. Nashville eventually called him “Mr. Songwriter” and the “dean” of its professional writers. By the time he died in 2002, Howard had written thousands of songs and more than 100 of his compositions had reached the country Top 10. But there is a later detail that says more about their durability. In 2023, more than twenty years after Howard’s death, Willie Nelson recorded an entire album of Harlan Howard songs, I Don’t Know a Thing About Love. The songwriter had been gone for two decades. Other voices were still finding new things to say with his words.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” “THREE CHORDS AND THE TRUTH.” HARLAN HOWARD REDUCED…

Country Music

EPIC DELIBERATELY GAVE JOE DIFFIE’S FIRST SINGLE NO MUSIC VIDEO. THEN “HOME” DID SOMETHING NO COUNTRY DEBUT SINGLE HAD EVER DONE — IT HIT NO. 1 ON BILLBOARD, RADIO & RECORDS AND GAVIN AT THE SAME TIME. Before “Home,” Joe Diffie had already taken the long way to Nashville. He had lost his foundry job in Oklahoma, sold the recording studio he had built, moved to Music City and worked at Gibson Guitar while singing demos and writing songs after hours. By 1990, Epic Records had finally signed him. But “Home” almost did not make his debut album. Diffie had heard the song so many times that he had stopped reacting to it. Publisher Johnny Slate urged him to listen once more. This time it put a lump in Diffie’s throat, and he agreed to record it. Then Epic made another unusual decision. There would be no music video for Diffie’s debut single. At a time when video exposure was becoming increasingly important to country artists, Diffie said the decision was deliberate: they wanted country radio to get the first shot at the music. Radio took it. Released in August 1990, “Home” climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart. It also topped Radio & Records and the Gavin Report, making Diffie the first country artist whose debut single reached No. 1 on all three major country charts then operating. But Diffie remembered another moment more vividly. He was back in Tulsa with his family after doing radio interviews. They were driving past Oral Roberts University when “Home” suddenly came through the car radio. They pulled over. Diffie remembered everyone in the car crying. Years later, that same Oklahoma connection produced an unexpected coda. In 2019, Diffie joined Tulsa country station KXBL as a midday host. When announcing the job, he remembered hearing “Home” on its sister station KVOO and said that was the moment he realized he was on his way. Nearly three decades after his first record came through an Oklahoma radio speaker, Joe Diffie returned to Oklahoma radio from the other side of the microphone.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” EPIC DELIBERATELY GAVE JOE DIFFIE’S FIRST SINGLE NO…

Country Music

AT 35, DOUG STONE WAS ALREADY A PLATINUM COUNTRY STAR — THEN FOUR BLOCKED ARTERIES PUT HIM THROUGH QUADRUPLE BYPASS SURGERY WHILE HIS SONGS WERE STILL CLIMBING TO NO. 1. Doug Stone had spent years working ordinary jobs around Georgia while singing wherever he could. He was already in his thirties when Epic Records finally signed him in 1989. The breakthrough came quickly. “I’d Be Better Off (In a Pine Box)” reached the country Top 5 in 1990. “In a Different Light” and “A Jukebox with a Country Song” followed it to No. 1, while his first two albums went platinum. Then, in December 1992, Stone experienced chest pain. Doctors discovered severe coronary blockages. At only 35, he underwent quadruple bypass surgery. The timing could hardly have been worse. His third album, From the Heart, had just been released, and Stone was forced away from touring while one of the biggest stretches of his career was still unfolding. Country radio kept moving without him. “Too Busy Being in Love” reached No. 1 in early 1993. Then “Why Didn’t I Think of That” became another chart-topper. Stone recovered and returned to the road, but his health troubles were not finished. In December 1995, he suffered a heart attack. Later medical problems, including a serious 1998 plane crash, interrupted his career again. The hits eventually slowed, but the early run left Stone with eight No. 1 country singles and millions of records sold. Years later, those chart numbers tell only part of what happened. For a stretch in 1993, Doug Stone was hearing his songs reach No. 1 while the more immediate job was teaching a 35-year-old body how to handle the road again.

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ATLANTIC RECORDS WANTED DANNY SHIRLEY ALONE. HE REFUSED—AND THE BAND HE INSISTED ON BRINGING WITH HIM WENT DOUBLE PLATINUM AS CONFEDERATE RAILROAD. Before Confederate Railroad had a name, Danny Shirley and the musicians around him had already spent years in the harder edges of country music. Shirley had worked with David Allan Coe, while members of the group played behind artists including Coe and Johnny Paycheck. By the late 1980s, they were playing Nashville clubs together as a house band, mixing country with Southern rock, honky-tonk and a deliberately rough image far removed from Nashville polish. Then Atlantic Records became interested. The label initially considered signing Shirley as a solo artist. Shirley pushed back. Nashville already had plenty of solo singers, he argued, and the chemistry came from the musicians playing together. Atlantic agreed. Confederate Railroad signed with the label, and their self-titled debut arrived in 1992. The gamble worked quickly. “Jesus and Mama” reached the country Top 5. “Queen of Memphis” climbed to No. 2, while “Trashy Women” became the song most closely associated with the band. The album eventually went double platinum, and the Academy of Country Music named Confederate Railroad Top New Vocal Group. They followed with Notorious and another run of hits, including “Daddy Never Was the Cadillac Kind,” proving the first album had not simply been a novelty-driven accident. Shirley could have entered Nashville with his own name on the record sleeve. Instead, he insisted on bringing the people who had already been standing behind him. Years later, the name that survived from that decision was not Danny Shirley. It was Confederate Railroad.

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Country Music

ALAN JACKSON WAS WORKING IN THE MAILROOM AT THE NASHVILLE NETWORK WHEN HE GOT A CHANCE TO SING ON THE VERY CHANNEL DELIVERING OTHER PEOPLE’S COUNTRY STARS INTO AMERICAN HOMES. ONE OF THE MEN WHO HEARD HIM WAS KEITH STEGALL. Alan Jackson and his wife Denise moved from Georgia to Nashville in 1985 with no record deal waiting. Jackson took whatever work kept them afloat. One job put him in the mailroom at The Nashville Network, the cable channel then helping carry country music across America. He was close to the business, but still outside it. Then Jackson got a chance to appear on TNN’s talent program You Can Be a Star. He sang George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Among the people who heard him was singer, songwriter and producer Keith Stegall. Stegall recognized something in the lanky Georgia singer and encouraged him. The encounter did not suddenly produce a record contract; Jackson still spent years writing, making demos and trying to get Nashville labels interested. But Stegall stayed in the picture. When Arista Nashville was being launched near the end of the decade, Jackson finally got his opening. He signed with the new label in 1989 and became the first artist signed to its country roster. His debut album, Here in the Real World, followed in 1990. Keith Stegall produced it. The partnership continued through records including “Don’t Rock the Jukebox,” “Chattahoochee,” “Gone Country,” “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” and many more, helping define Jackson’s traditional-country sound across decades. What began as one early encounter eventually became one of the longest and most consequential artist-producer partnerships of modern country music. By the time Jackson entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2017, Stegall was no longer simply the man who had once heard an unknown singer perform a George Jones song. He was standing behind much of the recorded catalog that helped put Jackson there.

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Country Music

TOBY KEITH HAD ALREADY SCORED COUNTRY HITS WHEN HIS LABEL REFUSED TO RELEASE THE SONG HE BELIEVED COULD CHANGE HIS CAREER. HE LEFT — AND “HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?!” BECAME THE BIGGEST COUNTRY HIT OF 2000. By the late 1990s, Toby Keith was successful but frustrated. His 1993 debut “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” had gone to No. 1, and more hits followed. But years of label changes involving Mercury, Polydor and A&M left Keith increasingly unhappy with how his music was being handled. One point of conflict was “How Do You Like Me Now?!,” a song Keith had written with Chuck Cannon. Keith believed in it. His label did not want to release it. When his relationship with Mercury ended, Keith regained rights to several songs and took the material elsewhere. DreamWorks Nashville signed him, and producer James Stroud—who had worked on Keith’s early records—returned to the studio with him. How Do You Like Me Now?! arrived in 1999. The title track was released as a single and did exactly what Keith had believed it could do. In 2000, it spent five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart and finished as Billboard’s No. 1 country song of the year. More importantly, it began a different phase of his career. At DreamWorks, Keith followed with records including “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This,” “I’m Just Talkin’ About Tonight,” “I Wanna Talk About Me” and “My List,” establishing the run that turned him from an established 1990s singer into one of country music’s dominant stars of the next decade. The song Mercury had declined to back did not simply survive the label change. It became the record that Keith carried through the door to the most commercially powerful stretch of his career.

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ACHY BREAKY HEART” MADE BILLY RAY CYRUS A STAR ALMOST OVERNIGHT. IT ALSO BECAME SO BIG THAT FOR YEARS, THE SONG WAS HARDER TO ESCAPE THAN THE MAN WHO SANG IT. THEN 27 YEARS LATER, “OLD TOWN ROAD” PUT HIM BACK INSIDE THE BIGGEST HIT IN AMERICA. Billy Ray Cyrus arrived nationally in 1992 with almost no gradual climb. “Achy Breaky Heart” went to No. 1 on the country chart, while his debut album Some Gave All exploded beyond country music. It spent 17 consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200 and became the best-selling album in America that year. Cyrus was suddenly everywhere. So was the backlash. The song’s line dance, Cyrus’ mullet and the enormous crossover attention turned him into a pop-culture phenomenon, but they also reduced a much broader country career to one image. He kept recording and scoring country hits, including “Could’ve Been Me,” “In the Heart of a Woman” and “Busy Man,” yet nothing could compete with the shadow of those first months. As the 1990s ended, country radio moved on. Then came 2019. A 20-year-old rapper named Lil Nas X had created “Old Town Road,” a short country-trap song that went viral through TikTok. After Billboard removed the original recording from its Hot Country Songs chart, Billy Ray Cyrus joined the remix. It was an unlikely pairing: a young internet-born rapper at the beginning of his career and a country singer still widely associated with a novelty-sized hit from 1992. The remix became enormous. “Old Town Road” spent a then-record 19 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. For Cyrus, it ended a gap of 26 years and eight months between Hot 100 Top 10 appearances. It also introduced him to listeners who had not been born when “Achy Breaky Heart” was released. The collaboration earned Grammy nominations for Record of the Year and won Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Music Video. Cyrus had spent decades being identified with the record that made him famous. Then the streaming generation attached his name to another cultural phenomenon entirely. This time, he was not the young star standing in the center of it. He was the veteran standing beside a 20-year-old newcomer while country, rap and the internet collided around them.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” “ACHY BREAKY HEART” MADE BILLY RAY CYRUS FAMOUS…

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