Midway through his performance at the CMA Awards this September, Alan Jackson rocked the Grand Ole Opry House by launching into a few lines from the George Jones hit “Choices,” one of five songs nominated for single of the year. Jackson then stomped offstage in a huff. The typically phlegmatic singer was protesting the CMA’s request that Jones do a truncated version of “Choices” on the show, an offer that the 68-year-old legend blew off after learning that a number of hot young stars were promised all the time they needed to sing their hits. In a statement issued backstage after his appearance that night, Jackson alluded to Jones’ recent near-fatal SUV wreck. “Had George Jones died,” he said, “there would have been a 10-minute tribute to him on the show. But he lived, and they wouldn’t give him three minutes.”

A galvanizing moment, Jackson’s stunt at the CMAs was emblematic of country’s current identity crisis: The conflict between the upbeat pop ditties that rule country radio and the hardcore sounds and themes that are such a vital part of the music’s legacy. It’s a rift that Music Row can’t afford to ignore. Country’s market share is down, as it has been ever since it peaked at nearly 19 percent in 1993. But perhaps greater cause for concern is the fact that the industry’s five best-selling acts—Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, the Dixie Chicks, and Tim McGraw—account for a disproportionately large slice of that pie, and that Nashville has broken only one big act since 1997 (the Chicks). And lately, with Brooks going pop and talking of retiring, LeAnn Rimes going Hollywood, and Hill going down the tubes, some of country’s biggest names are bailing on the format at a time when it needs them most.

An air of desperation seems to have set in on Music Row, with record companies churning out Faith, Shania, and Chicks clones in hopes of capitalizing on the success of these pop-friendly mega-stars. Even an established singer like Martina McBride, the reigning CMA Female Vocalist of the Year, has succumbed to the pressure: “I Love You,” her recent No. 1 single, is an out-and-out cop of Hill’s “This Kiss.” Consolidation within the industry has only exacerbated the problem. With less competition from upstart labels, the five big conglomerates have no incentive to take risks on left-of-center acts; instead, they “dumb down” their product to reach the broadest possible demographic. Radio is only too happy to oblige, lapping up homogenized hits that segue imperceptibly back and forth between their sponsors’ jingles.

“Murder on Music Row,” a recent single by Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time, gives voice to the malaise that’s grown out of Nashville’s ethic of disposability. “Steel guitars no longer cry and fiddles barely play/But drums and rock ’n’ roll guitars are mixed up in your face,” Cordle mourns to the strains of crying Dobro and fiddle. Fighting words, to be sure, but they’re hardly gratuitous: Cordle, a successful songwriter who’s seen the likes of Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood cut his songs, is putting his money where his mouth is. And two of country’s biggest stars, George Strait and Alan Jackson, are making sure his plaint gets a wider hearing: The two singers have recorded a duet of “Murder on Music Row” for Strait’s forthcoming album, due out sometime next spring.

Strait, Jackson, and Cordle aren’t the only ones stumping for a resurgence of sawdust and steel guitar—not if the traditionalist bent of most of 1999’s best albums is any indication. Music Row newcomers like Brad Paisley, Matt King, Chalee Tennison, and Jerry Kilgore all released hard-country-leaning albums this year. Folksinger John Prine revived the male-female duet of country’s golden era, while George Jones, Marty Stuart, and June Carter Cash each cut unvarnished gems that looked back on their lives and careers. Bluegrass also made a resounding comeback, led by Dolly Parton, Ricky Skaggs, and Steve Earle & the Del McCoury Band.

Of course, it would be naive to think that country’s pendulum will swing too far back in a hardcore direction, and I’m not sure I’d want it to. Shania Twain took home CMA Entertainer of the Year honors in September for a reason: She deserved it, and not just for her record sales and tireless touring, but for her artistic merit as well. Twain’s twang may rock too much for purists’ tastes, but there’s no denying the endorphin rush of her turbo-charged snap, crackle, and pop.

All of which suggests that the most prescient voice in country music this year was that of the CMA voters, who awarded the Dixie Chicks in three different categories, recognizing the trio’s mix of pop smarts and cowgirl grit as a possible middle ground. And well they should have: The Chicks’ banjo-and-fiddle-brandishing sophomore disc, Fly, fairly lives up to its title. Nevertheless, the album that made a believer out of me in 1999 was Heart Shaped World, the debut by 15-year-old Jessica Andrews. Embracing country’s pop and down-home proclivities, and steeping them in her older-than-her-years cottonfield soul, Andrews sounded to me like the voice of country’s future.

1. Jessica Andrews, Heart Shaped World (Dreamworks) Andrews is the latest in a line of heart-in-throat country females, including Brenda Lee, Tanya Tucker, and LeAnn Rimes, who first made their mark before they were old enough to drive. Here, she evokes everything from the youthful exuberance of Trisha Yearwood circa “She’s in Love With the Boy” to the post-punk pluck of Shania Twain to the humid magnolia drawl of Bobbie Gentry. I suspect it’s the last of these that makes Heart Shaped World sound so fresh. Growing up in West Tennessee—closer to Memphis than Nashville—Andrews gleaned a lot more grit than she would have had she come of age amid the glamour and glitz of Music Row.

2. Dolly Parton, The Grass is Blue (Sugar Hill) Who’d have thought that at this late date Parton’s mountain roots would run so deep? More than just her best album in 30 years, this return of the “lady muleskinner” proves that Dolly is the ultimate Dixie chick.

3. Dixie Chicks, Fly (Monument) Apart from a sappy ballad or two, this is as heady and headstrong as commercial country gets. Predictably, critics on both coasts hailed the Thelma and Louise-cartoon “Goodbye Earl” as the apotheosis of punk, but that’s not what’s had the tongues of Southerners wagging. The real scandal here is “Sin Wagon,” and less for Natalie Maines’ line about “mattress dancin’ ” than for the way the Chicks get away with murder by slipping a banjo-driven breakdown onto a Music Row record.

4. June Carter Cash, Press On (Risk/Small Hairy Dog) Carter Cash’s first solo album in a quarter-century is tantamount to her musical autobiography. Built around her rudimentary autoharp, weathered vocals, and a clutch of breathtakingly intimate songs, it also testifies to the staying power of the rough-hewn aesthetic that her mother, aunt, and uncle—the original Carter Family—brought down from Virginia’s Clinch Mountains in 1927.

5. George Jones, Cold Hard Truth (Asylum) Jones has unburdened himself plenty over the years, but this album is the most explicitly confessional of his career. Even when he’s at his most playful, the self-recrimination in his voice drips with feeling, such as when he slurs the lines, “I liked drinking/Oh and I never turned it down,” or when he swoops from high tenor to subterranean baritone, palpably conveying what it means to hit rock bottom. Nothing, however, compares with the elegiac Southern gospel of the closing track, “When the Last Curtain Falls.” Here, as Jones ponders his final reckoning, he conveys the wisdom and acceptance of a man who’s experienced absolution.

6. Steve Earle & the Del McCoury Band, The Mountain (E-Squared) The bluegrass police may take umbrage with Earle’s ravaged voice and rock ’n’ roll heart, but there’s no denying this soul-stirring collaboration with the Del McCoury Band. Not only that, Earle has written three or four potential bluegrass standards here, and if there’s one thing contemporary bluegrass needs, it’s songs.

7. Buddy Miller, Cruel Moon (HighTone) Steeped in both honky-tonk and R&B, Miller’s music paints him as a country-soul man after Memphis legend Dan Penn’s heart. The tortured cover of the Gene Pitney hit “I’m Gonna Be Strong” is perhaps the most obvious example here. But Miller invests nearly every line he sings and every string he bends with much the same smoldering intensity. The record’s most riveting moment comes on “Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go,” a scarifying, Robert Johnson-inspired plea for deliverance that finds Miller’s wife Julie laying down a spine-chilling jungle groove on drums.

8. Alan Jackson, Under the Influence (Arista) Jackson has always been the most history-conscious member of the class of ’89, the pack of hat acts that jump-started the country boom of the ’90s. But this collection of jukebox weepers, including signature songs from Gene Watson, John Anderson, and George Jones, positions him as the torch-bearing traditionalist of his generation.

9. John Prine, In Spite of Ourselves (Oh Boy) Teaming up with some of the finest female voices in country and folk, Prine gives the crucial but oft-maligned male-female duet its due. In the process, he also forges a link between his own storytelling and that of the lunchpail greats of country’s ’50s and ’60s heyday.

10. Mandy Barnett, I’ve Got a Right to Cry (Sire) From torchy ballads like “Mistakes” to the Everlys-inspired “Give Myself a Party” to the honky-tonkin’ cover of Carl Smith’s “Trademark,” Barnett shows just how expansive the Nashville Sound can be. Allusions to Patsy Cline, as well as to Connie Francis and Patti Page, are inevitable. But whether her voice comes on brassy or radiates like a glowing ember, Barnett proves that she’s an awesome stylist in her own right.