As the country music industry begins to assess its priorities during this soft sales period, you can bet decision-makers will be looking back to the years of 1989 to 1991, when a new class of young performers grabbed the nation’s attention and carried country into the American mainstream. Back then, strong, individual talents seemed to emerge from all corners. The list is staggering: Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, Brooks & Dunn, Travis Tritt, Trisha Yearwood, Mark Chesnutt, Collin Raye, Tracy Lawrence, Joe Diffie, Sammy Kershaw, Hal Ketchum, and Aaron Tippin were all introduced during those years. In addition, Vince Gill, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Loveless, and Marty Stuart achieved their commercial breakthroughs during this same period. The one unifying trait all these artists share is a clear-cut, distinctive personality. The same can’t be said for smiling poster boys like Clay Walker, Rick Trevino, Rhett Akins, or James Bonamy—only a sampling of the blank, anonymous horde foisted on country audiences in recent years.

Of the class of ’90, Alan Jackson is the singer who best embodies country music’s traditional values and its newfound sales success. While most of his contemporaries began with a firm foundation in traditional honky-tonk—it was, after all, the overriding trend of the late ’80s—only Jackson and one other singer, Mark Chesnutt, remain firmly dedicated to the sound of fiddles and steel guitars.

But the role of traditional standard-bearer is not one Jackson purposefully embraces. By nature, he’s a shy, private person uncomfortable drawing attention to himself for anything other than his voice and his songs. He’s among the few modern country performers who hasn’t juiced up his concert performances by learning to shake his hips or dash across the stage. He’s become a ambassador for traditional music and old-fashioned values simply by staying true to himself rather than changing his image to fit the times.

“It seems like I’m ending up in that position because everybody else is moving away from it,” Jackson observes. “I remember when Clint Black’s first album came out—it was right before I got my record deal. It was a great album. I thought, ‘Man, that’s real country. I like him.’ Of course, he’s moved away from that now. And Garth had a couple of good country songs on his first album. But they’ve all changed their sound. Since my first year, since I first had a hit, I don’t guess mine has changed.”

As most other artists have followed Garth and Clint toward a pop-based sound—complete with arena-rock chest-beaters and over-the-top power ballads—Jackson has stuck closely to his original sound and image. His songs swing rather than pound, and his ballads turn on quiet realizations rather than melodramatic epiphanies. Nonetheless, he remains near the top of the list of bankable country music stars; each of his albums has reached multiplatinum status, suggesting that his work and his career have a rare consistency in this fickle, fast-to-burn-out age.

All of which makes a recent statement by Jackson all the more devastating. Asked if he thought he would have a harder time drawing the attention of record companies in the mid-’90s, the singer responded in the affirmative. “Oh, I guarantee it,” he said. “I wouldn’t get a record deal [now]. I lucked in there at the right time.”

Jackson has never been a rabble-rouser or a controversy seeker, and his comments come without bitterness—after all, he certainly hasn’t slipped from his lofty commercial perch. Nonetheless, the implications of his pronouncements are quite shocking: One of country music’s biggest-selling artists—indeed, one of the few likely to maintain a high profile more than a decade after his debut—flatly says he’d likely be passed over in the ’90s in favor of...whom? Mark Wills? Kenny Chesney? Ricochet?

Goaded on, this soft-spoken star makes a few other outspoken observations about the current state of Nashville and Music Row. He doesn’t keep up with country radio like he once did, he says; indeed, the up-and-coming singers he likes usually end up being the ones shut out from the airwaves for sounding too traditional. “There’s still some people out there making country records every now and then,” Jackson says. “There’s some new artists I’ve heard that are real good, but [they’re] having a hard time getting played. Radio is scared of them or something. I’m getting played because I’m already established. I’m selling records. It’s not that they have to play my songs, but some of them probably feel like the fans want to hear it. But they’re not sure about a new guy who might play the same thing.”

Jackson points to the success of LeAnn Rimes as proof that radio could afford to be more inclusive. “You got this...‘Blue’ song that sounds like Patsy Cline, and everybody eats it up. You think that’d be an example to radio that people want to hear something like that.”

Radio can’t be held entirely accountable for country music’s recent turmoil, Jackson notes. Even with the thousands of songs coming out of the Music Row songwriting factories, he complains, it’s still difficult to find a good, solid country song worth recording.

Jackson also repeats a long-standing criticism of the people running record labels and making key musical decisions: “A lot of the record company people, at least the ones I’ve met, they aren’t real music people like they used to be back in the old days,” he says. “A lot of the record industry people used to be musicians or had been artists at one time. They were music people. Now a lot of them are businesspeople.” He stops for a second and looks away, then adds with a gentle grin, “I don’t think they’re in touch with those K-Mart shoppers anymore. It used to be good ol’ boys up there running the thing. Like I said, now it’s all businesspeople. They find an act and they don’t want them to cut that real country stuff.”

Digging deep

The real country stuff is all Jackson wants to do, and no one in the last decade has been more successful at turning traditional formulas into commercially accessible hits. Even the title of his new album, Everything I Love, evokes images of familiar, comfortable territory, but Jackson manages to give the 10 songs a depth and vitality rarely heard on a Nashville production these days.

If anything, Jackson’s new album anchors itself deeper in neo-traditional honky-tonk than any album since his debut, Here in the Real World. Like George Strait, he puts a smooth gloss on an old sound, and he fills his polished tones with a lived-in warmth that exudes believability and reassurance. And like Strait, he alters his tunes just enough to keep them fresh, giving album after album an individual strength while never moving too far from the sound his fans have come to expect.

Even if Jackson stands a little apart from most of his peers, he still belongs wholly to modern country music. He eschews the wild-eyed rambunctiousness of past honky-tonk stars—his country music is that of a happy, well-adjusted family man. When he sings of rowdy escapades, as in the new album’s Dixieland-fueled “Must’ve Had a Ball,” he makes it a humorous, fun bouncer about one errant night of indulgence. His unexpected cover of Charly McClain’s “Who’s Cheatin’ Who” is similarly lighthearted and vibrant. Even though it’s a song about infidelity, in Jackson’s hands, it sounds more like a faithful couple joking about the deceitful shenanigans of their neighbors and coworkers. Both songs work well, as does “Little Bitty,” a sly, new, Tom T. Hall original. Here, Jackson turns a seemingly inane chorus into a jaunty romp about the joys of simplicity and small-town living. No one could have done it better.

As on 1994’s outstanding Who I Am, the ballads are where Jackson digs in deepest. His “House With No Curtains,” cowritten with longtime collaborator Jim McBride, is modeled on George Jones’ great weepers from the ’60s and ’70s, and he nails it with a mournful grace. But writers Harley Allen and Carson Chamberlain provide Jackson with both of the album’s high points: “Between the Devil and Me” and “Everything I Love” portray quiet, desperate men recognizing hard truths, and they’re two of the most affecting, heart-wrenching ballads Jackson has recorded.

The former song finds a hard-luck loser acknowledging that the only thing that keeps him from sliding into the abyss is a woman who loves him despite his faults. Jackson pushes his voice harder and higher than ever as he sings, “The gates of hell swing open wide/Invitin’ me to step inside.” His crying plea sets up a prayerful chorus, in which he tenderly concedes that his life would turn much darker if it weren’t for the strength he gets from his partner’s love. “She’s all I see/Between the devil and me,” he sings with gentle determination.

“Everything I Love,” on the other hand, is about living with no such comforts. In this song, a despondent man recognizes that he must give up the woman he desires, even though losing her will break him in two. As he mourns his loss, he assesses the only pleasures he has left: “cigarettes, Jack Daniels, and caffeine.” Each of these things also hurts him, he observes; perhaps he should give them up too. Jackson lends just the right tone of despair as the man softly concludes, “Everything I love is killing me.”

Most Music Row songwriters would have turned the hard realizations of these two songs into a joke—after all, upbeat and corny is what country radio wants. And most stations aren’t likely to embrace the sad, weary sentiments that Jackson lays out so plainly and movingly on his new ballads. That’s a shame, of course, and Jackson himself despises this reality as much as any other country fan.

That Jackson has been performing “Everything I Love” in high-profile television appearances underscores his commitment to the kind of country music he prefers. It seems likely the song will be an upcoming single; if so, it will be interesting to see how country radio reacts. After all, Vince Gill has been repeatedly shot down for similar moves—neither “Go Rest High on This Mountain” nor “High, Lonesome Sound” reached theTop 10, because many of the leading country radio stations refused to put them in high rotation.

Perhaps Jackson realizes that the only way to change the country format is if Gill and other leading stars rebuff radio’s low standards. Everything I Love isn’t a radical move by any measure; it offers solid upbeat fare that will please radio and country dance fans. But it balances that sentiment with songs of difficult introspection. In its quiet way, Everything I Love proves that Jackson is among the few ’90s country stars with the guts to stick to what he believes in. He doesn’t compromise himself in order to play it safe. It’s one of the reasons why Jackson will still be standing tall long after many of his contemporaries have faded away.

As the country music industry begins to assess its priorities during this soft sales period, you can bet decision-makers will be looking back to the years of 1989 to 1991, when a new class of young performers grabbed the nation’s attention and carried country into the American mainstream. Back then, strong, individual talents seemed to emerge from all corners. The list is staggering: Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, Brooks & Dunn, Travis Tritt, Trisha Yearwood, Mark Chesnutt, Collin Raye, Tracy Lawrence, Joe Diffie, Sammy Kershaw, Hal Ketchum, and Aaron Tippin were all introduced during those years. In addition, Vince Gill, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Loveless, and Marty Stuart achieved their commercial breakthroughs during this same period. The one unifying trait all these artists share is a clear-cut, distinctive personality. The same can’t be said for smiling poster boys like Clay Walker, Rick Trevino, Rhett Akins, or James Bonamy—only a sampling of the blank, anonymous horde foisted on country audiences in recent years.

Of the class of ’90, Alan Jackson is the singer who best embodies country music’s traditional values and its newfound sales success. While most of his contemporaries began with a firm foundation in traditional honky-tonk—it was, after all, the overriding trend of the late ’80s—only Jackson and one other singer, Mark Chesnutt, remain firmly dedicated to the sound of fiddles and steel guitars.

But the role of traditional standard-bearer is not one Jackson purposefully embraces. By nature, he’s a shy, private person uncomfortable drawing attention to himself for anything other than his voice and his songs. He’s among the few modern country performers who hasn’t juiced up his concert performances by learning to shake his hips or dash across the stage. He’s become a ambassador for traditional music and old-fashioned values simply by staying true to himself rather than changing his image to fit the times.

“It seems like I’m ending up in that position because everybody else is moving away from it,” Jackson observes. “I remember when Clint Black’s first album came out—it was right before I got my record deal. It was a great album. I thought, ‘Man, that’s real country. I like him.’ Of course, he’s moved away from that now. And Garth had a couple of good country songs on his first album. But they’ve all changed their sound. Since my first year, since I first had a hit, I don’t guess mine has changed.”

As most other artists have followed Garth and Clint toward a pop-based sound—complete with arena-rock chest-beaters and over-the-top power ballads—Jackson has stuck closely to his original sound and image. His songs swing rather than pound, and his ballads turn on quiet realizations rather than melodramatic epiphanies. Nonetheless, he remains near the top of the list of bankable country music stars; each of his albums has reached multiplatinum status, suggesting that his work and his career have a rare consistency in this fickle, fast-to-burn-out age.

All of which makes a recent statement by Jackson all the more devastating. Asked if he thought he would have a harder time drawing the attention of record companies in the mid-’90s, the singer responded in the affirmative. “Oh, I guarantee it,” he said. “I wouldn’t get a record deal [now]. I lucked in there at the right time.”

Jackson has never been a rabble-rouser or a controversy seeker, and his comments come without bitterness—after all, he certainly hasn’t slipped from his lofty commercial perch. Nonetheless, the implications of his pronouncements are quite shocking: One of country music’s biggest-selling artists—indeed, one of the few likely to maintain a high profile more than a decade after his debut—flatly says he’d likely be passed over in the ’90s in favor of...whom? Mark Wills? Kenny Chesney? Ricochet?

Goaded on, this soft-spoken star makes a few other outspoken observations about the current state of Nashville and Music Row. He doesn’t keep up with country radio like he once did, he says; indeed, the up-and-coming singers he likes usually end up being the ones shut out from the airwaves for sounding too traditional. “There’s still some people out there making country records every now and then,” Jackson says. “There’s some new artists I’ve heard that are real good, but [they’re] having a hard time getting played. Radio is scared of them or something. I’m getting played because I’m already established. I’m selling records. It’s not that they have to play my songs, but some of them probably feel like the fans want to hear it. But they’re not sure about a new guy who might play the same thing.”

Jackson points to the success of LeAnn Rimes as proof that radio could afford to be more inclusive. “You got this...‘Blue’ song that sounds like Patsy Cline, and everybody eats it up. You think that’d be an example to radio that people want to hear something like that.”

Radio can’t be held entirely accountable for country music’s recent turmoil, Jackson notes. Even with the thousands of songs coming out of the Music Row songwriting factories, he complains, it’s still difficult to find a good, solid country song worth recording.

Jackson also repeats a long-standing criticism of the people running record labels and making key musical decisions: “A lot of the record company people, at least the ones I’ve met, they aren’t real music people like they used to be back in the old days,” he says. “A lot of the record industry people used to be musicians or had been artists at one time. They were music people. Now a lot of them are businesspeople.” He stops for a second and looks away, then adds with a gentle grin, “I don’t think they’re in touch with those K-Mart shoppers anymore. It used to be good ol’ boys up there running the thing. Like I said, now it’s all businesspeople. They find an act and they don’t want them to cut that real country stuff.”

Digging deep

The real country stuff is all Jackson wants to do, and no one in the last decade has been more successful at turning traditional formulas into commercially accessible hits. Even the title of his new album, Everything I Love, evokes images of familiar, comfortable territory, but Jackson manages to give the 10 songs a depth and vitality rarely heard on a Nashville production these days.

If anything, Jackson’s new album anchors itself deeper in neo-traditional honky-tonk than any album since his debut, Here in the Real World. Like George Strait, he puts a smooth gloss on an old sound, and he fills his polished tones with a lived-in warmth that exudes believability and reassurance. And like Strait, he alters his tunes just enough to keep them fresh, giving album after album an individual strength while never moving too far from the sound his fans have come to expect.

Even if Jackson stands a little apart from most of his peers, he still belongs wholly to modern country music. He eschews the wild-eyed rambunctiousness of past honky-tonk stars—his country music is that of a happy, well-adjusted family man. When he sings of rowdy escapades, as in the new album’s Dixieland-fueled “Must’ve Had a Ball,” he makes it a humorous, fun bouncer about one errant night of indulgence. His unexpected cover of Charly McClain’s “Who’s Cheatin’ Who” is similarly lighthearted and vibrant. Even though it’s a song about infidelity, in Jackson’s hands, it sounds more like a faithful couple joking about the deceitful shenanigans of their neighbors and coworkers. Both songs work well, as does “Little Bitty,” a sly, new, Tom T. Hall original. Here, Jackson turns a seemingly inane chorus into a jaunty romp about the joys of simplicity and small-town living. No one could have done it better.

As on 1994’s outstanding Who I Am, the ballads are where Jackson digs in deepest. His “House With No Curtains,” cowritten with longtime collaborator Jim McBride, is modeled on George Jones’ great weepers from the ’60s and ’70s, and he nails it with a mournful grace. But writers Harley Allen and Carson Chamberlain provide Jackson with both of the album’s high points: “Between the Devil and Me” and “Everything I Love” portray quiet, desperate men recognizing hard truths, and they’re two of the most affecting, heart-wrenching ballads Jackson has recorded.

The former song finds a hard-luck loser acknowledging that the only thing that keeps him from sliding into the abyss is a woman who loves him despite his faults. Jackson pushes his voice harder and higher than ever as he sings, “The gates of hell swing open wide/Invitin’ me to step inside.” His crying plea sets up a prayerful chorus, in which he tenderly concedes that his life would turn much darker if it weren’t for the strength he gets from his partner’s love. “She’s all I see/Between the devil and me,” he sings with gentle determination.

“Everything I Love,” on the other hand, is about living with no such comforts. In this song, a despondent man recognizes that he must give up the woman he desires, even though losing her will break him in two. As he mourns his loss, he assesses the only pleasures he has left: “cigarettes, Jack Daniels, and caffeine.” Each of these things also hurts him, he observes; perhaps he should give them up too. Jackson lends just the right tone of despair as the man softly concludes, “Everything I love is killing me.”

Most Music Row songwriters would have turned the hard realizations of these two songs into a joke—after all, upbeat and corny is what country radio wants. And most stations aren’t likely to embrace the sad, weary sentiments that Jackson lays out so plainly and movingly on his new ballads. That’s a shame, of course, and Jackson himself despises this reality as much as any other country fan.

That Jackson has been performing “Everything I Love” in high-profile television appearances underscores his commitment to the kind of country music he prefers. It seems likely the song will be an upcoming single; if so, it will be interesting to see how country radio reacts. After all, Vince Gill has been repeatedly shot down for similar moves—neither “Go Rest High on This Mountain” nor “High, Lonesome Sound” reached theTop 10, because many of the leading country radio stations refused to put them in high rotation.

Perhaps Jackson realizes that the only way to change the country format is if Gill and other leading stars rebuff radio’s low standards. Everything I Love isn’t a radical move by any measure; it offers solid upbeat fare that will please radio and country dance fans. But it balances that sentiment with songs of difficult introspection. In its quiet way, Everything I Love proves that Jackson is among the few ’90s country stars with the guts to stick to what he believes in. He doesn’t compromise himself in order to play it safe. It’s one of the reasons why Jackson will still be standing tall long after many of his contemporaries have faded away.

— Michael McCall