'90s Country

The '90s put country music on the charts, quite literally, as the new SoundScan sales-based charts confirmed Nashville's secret: them country folks sold lots more records than the city slickers thought. Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn electrified the line dance with their "Boot Scootin' Boogie," Clint Black paid homage to the Eagles with his cover of "Desperado," and Faith Hill had a huge crossover smash with her anthemic "Breathe."

The Dixie Chicks turned their multi-year underground status into "overnight success" with an album (Wide Open Spaces) that featured three #1 hits, of which "There's Your Trouble" was the first. Lorrie Morgan rebounded from the death of her country-superstar husband Keith Whitley to great chart success, notably with the autobiographical "I Didn't Know My Own Strength." And LeAnn Rimes' "Blue" harked back to Patsy Cline's era as a counterweight to country's modernization.

Aaron Tippin had his first chart-topper of the '90s with a song about his beater car with the great sound system, "There Ain't Nothing Wrong With the Radio." Mary Chapin Carpenter walked us through her (and many other women's) fantasy when Dwight Yoakam and Lyle Lovett competed for her attention in "Shut Up and Kiss Me." And Faith Hill had an unlikely smash with a song made famous by Janis Joplin, "Piece of My Heart."

The '90s was a transitional time in country music. It was the era of the line dance, the "hat" vs. the "no hat" acts, the winding down of the hit-making machine named for the Cotton State, and Wynonna Judd's transition to just plain Wynonna, as her audience grew exponentially. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw had the most notable country merger since Johnny Cash and June Carter. And while rhythmic, rather than melodic, music dominated pop radio, millions of listeners (particularly young adult to middle-aged women) flocked to the sounds of country. With the advent of the sales-based SoundScan, which determined chart positions, one of the great "secrets" of the record business was confirmed: country music sold far more than most anyone outside Nashville acknowledged.