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The innervating title track was a success on both movie screens and radio playlists, so it’s sometimes missed that here it functions as a kind of thesis statement for a Dolly Parton concept album about working-class struggle. The album’s also a great example of how Parton values tradition, placing old themes and songs in modern […]

Hard Hitting Songs… is the career-best effort from one of the most powerful singers, and most searing political performers, in all of American music. Backed by an all-star acoustic band that includes Norman and Nancy Blake, Lloyd Green, Buddy Spicher, and Tony Trischka, Hazel Dickens’ voice here is as twangy as they come — she […]

The autobiographical title track, written by John Schweers at the singer’s request, was hardly breaking news. Pride has been singing Hank Williams songs in concert for years. Usually these were novelties — a live “Kaw-Liga” was a major hit in 1969 — but on this tribute, Pride favors the sad-and-sentimental sections of the Williams songbook, […]

Back to the Barrooms is an on-the-downlow concept album devoted to wine, women, and song — and to their attendant anxieties for working musicians, evidenced most obviously in “Leonard,” Merle’s tribute to mentor Tommy Collins, a.k.a. Leonard Sipes. Produced by Jimmy Bowen and performed by a band of Music City pros, the album’s also one […]

A pretty, and pretty straightforward, Emmylou Harris bluegrass album, featuring backing from old New South members Tony Rice, Jerry Douglas and Ricky Skaggs, among others, on songs by Flatt & Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, the Carter Family and even Paul Simon. The highlight, though, is a bit of a surprise: Harris, whose ethereal voice nearly always […]

A simultaneous exemplar of old school country and Urban Cowboy-era Countrypolitan, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” gifted George Jones, already considered country’s greatest-ever singer, with a belated signature hit as he was about to turn 50. It’s iconic, for sure, but might not even be the album’s best single. “If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me (Her […]

Gideon finds story-song master Kenny Rogers spinning an album-length tale about a “No Good Texas Rounder” who’s looking back on his life while somehow watching his own funeral. “Some say I was a good man, some disagree,” he growls, in his characteristically soulful delivery. All through, Rogers is backed by smoothly bluesy and gently funky […]

People forget how big a country star Razzy Bailey was for just a minute there, with five Number One hits and eight more Top Tens in just four years. On Razzy, he predicts adulterous danger ahead on the Outlaw-disco hybrid “Loving Up a Storm,” pledges aching electric-piano devotion in “I Can’t Get Enough of You,” […]

On her third album, Carlene Carter was produced by her then-husband Nick Lowe when he used to rock and roll, and she was backed by Lowe and Dave Edmunds’ beau idéal of a roots-rock band, Rockpile (whose proto-Americana masterpiece, Seconds of Pleasure, was a couple of months away). The single was “Baby Ride Easy,” a […]

The list of women country artists who were underappreciated in their time, or who’ve been altogether overlooked ever since, is depressingly long. Though mostly forgotten today, at least Lacy J. Dalton had a moment with Hard Times (and its follow-up, Takin’ It Easy). Dalton’s sound was a brand of country deeply indebted to R&B and […]

Willie Nelson was everywhere in 1980. He co-starred in two big Hollywood films, The Electric Horseman and Honeysuckle Rose, and helmed their soundtracks (featuring crossover hits “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” and “On the Road Again,” respectively). He also released Family Bible, a too-little-known gospel set with pianist sister Bobbie. But Nelson’s best album […]

The Kendalls’ Just Like Real People made the 1978 version of this list series. Ditto for the daughter-father team’s Old-Fashioned Love for 1979. Both albums were out of print at the time, so the good news is that they’re now both available to stream from the obvious sources. The bad news is that Heart of […]