Make the World Go Away
Country Music Television (CMT) is out today with a list of the 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time, as determined by a panel of experts. Lists like these are always great argument starters, and so is this one.

The top three songs are Tammy Wynette’s "Stand By Your Man," George Jones’ "He Stopped Loving Her Today," and Patsy Cline’s "Crazy." To me, that’s a three-way tie, although if you’d asked people to handicap the race beforehand, "Crazy" would likely have been the favorite for number one. You can’t hear it without picturing barroom jukeboxes and couples dancing slow—and after all, it is the top jukebox record of all time. I would have picked "He Stopped Loving Her Today" because it has everything—weepy strings, twangy bass guitar, a lyric that covers both unrequited love and death, and George’s 180-proof voice. But "Stand By Your Man" is a worthy top pick. Although the lyric is a pre-feminist artifact, the conviction with which Tammy Wynette sings it is powerful—and there’s no greater hook in country music than that refrain.

Farther down, any list that includes both Waylon and Willie classics, "Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" (#10) and "Good Hearted Woman" (#76) is OK by me. I’m glad to see the Eagles’ "Desperado" on there, too (#46), because they were a country band before they were anything else. Somewhere, Ringo Starr is smiling—"Act Naturally," recorded by Buck Owens, is at #55. In general, I’m pleased by the fact that the list pays homage to country’s past so effectively. Lists of this type often don't.

But that’s not to say I eschew the quibble. Where I start is at number four—I wouldn’t rank "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash ahead of his other hits on the list, "Folsom Prison Blues" (#25), "I Walk The Line" (#31), and "Sunday Morning Comin’ Down" (#92). "El Paso" by Marty Robbins is way too low at #42, and so is Eddy Arnold’s "Make the World Go Away" at #39. There’s entirely too much music by George Strait on the list, and how can you include Faith Hill’s "Breathe" (#38) but not Hank Snow’s "I’m Movin’ On" or "The Fightin’ Side of Me" by Merle Haggard? Talk about walkin’ on the fightin’ side. And where’s "Help Me Make It Through the Night"? In their new book Heartaches by the Number, which ranks the top 500 country singles of all time, David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren put the 1971 Sammi Smith recording at number one.

So there’s a good argument to have right there.

There are other omissions that are less egregious. For example, despite its claim to be the perfect country-western song, Steve Goodman’s "You Never Even Called Me By My Name," famously recorded by David Allan Coe, didn’t make it either. Neither did "Easy Loving" by Freddie Hart, the number-one country hit of the 1970s and one of my all-time faves. But I’m pleased to see Mary Chapin Carpenter’s "Passionate Kisses" (#87) and Rosanne Cash’s "Seven Year Ache" (#91), even if they are toward the bottom of the list.

Country music has taken plenty of grief from the likes of me over the last several months for being reactionary and jingoistic. It is that, and to some extent, it’s always been that—Lee Greenwood’s 1985 hit "God Bless the USA" is #65 on the list—but country is also more than that. CMT’s 100 Greatest is a timely reminder of what else country music has meant to us over the last half-century. [posted 6/5/03]