Country Love Songs

In that wide swath of America stretching between the Rockies and the Appalachians, country music is king, and that music just doesn't get any better than when there's lovin' in the air. When that lovin's true and good, nothing can touch it, but when it derails…well, no other music better speaks the pain of a broke-down heart and messed-up head. If you're wondering why Tim and Faith, Dolly and Kenny, and Vince and Trisha get to you the way they do, the answer's simple — they've lived it, just like you.

One of country's patented love song favorites is the ode to a partner without whom the singer would be nothing more than a road apple on the dusty cow trail of life. In some such numbers (Billy Dean's "If There Hadn't Been You" or Steve Wariner's "If I Didn't Love You") it's a direct confessional to the loved one; in others (Andy Griggs' "She Thinks She Needs Me") it's a secret between the singer and the audience. If both of those options are a little too sugary-sweet for your taste, try Mary Chapin Carpenter's flat-out "Shut Up and Kiss Me."

If it's true, as Paul Simon once noted, that "everything put together falls apart," then a whole new, and probably unintentional, light is cast on the tune "It's Such a Small World" when you discover it was recorded by ex-spouses Rodney Crowell and Roseanne Cash after their notorious and rather public split. On the other hand, when flirtation's poster child, Tanya Tucker, sings about settling down to the joys of everlasting love, as she does in "Strong Enough to Bend," the irony is truly delicious.

In the land of NASCAR and Friday Night Lights, Winn-Dixies and F-150 pickups, country music blankets the airwaves with the sound of men and women doing what comes naturally: falling in love. Whether it's the sweeter-than-honey sincerity of "I Will Always Love You," or the tongue-in-cheek "Shut Up and Kiss Me," contemporary country is ruled by affairs of the heart. In fact, some of these songs come from real-life lovers, like Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, and real-life exes such as Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash. After all, you can't have a great "she done left me" song unless you get together first.