NB: All Spotify streaming statistics accurate as of March 29 2024
It was astonishing but unsurprising to see Sophie Ellis-Bextor back in the UK Top 10 in 2024. I was blown away by her Kitchen Disco live set at Latitude in summer 2023, a mix of covers and originals that included Murder on the Dancefloor, which (fun fact) was written with Gregg ‘New Radicals’ Alexander and was intended as his band’s first single.
In the Top 40 too this year was a song that is seldom out of the Top 100: Mr Brightside by The Killers, the last great communal rock song that now belongs to the world much as how every Beatles song, Wichita Lineman and Friends in Low Places does. But which other country songs would chart again if similar rules on ‘ACR songs’ (which have Accelerated Chart Ratio) applied?
Let’s take Spotify metrics and RIAA certifications as indicators. That way, the two biggest songs of the last decade are the two diamond-certified tracks: Cruise by Florida Georgia Line (441m streams) and Tennessee Whiskey by Chris Stapleton, which is closing on a billion and is currently at 895m streams. Strangely, Body Like A Back Road is on that exact number too, although these days I seldom hear what was one of country’s biggest pre-pandemic hits. His shiny poppy sound has been replaced by the gloomy hiphoppy sound of Wallen and Jelly.
Of the tunes that no country celebration can be without, anything by Garth Brooks is tough to see metrics of because he keeps his tracks off Spotify. Now that AC/DC and Taylor Swift have capitulated, Garth is pretty much the only act in the world now whose music is missing. But it is clear that his evergreen about showing up in boots to a black-tie affair is deathless.
Likewise Shania Twain’s refusal to be impressed by someone who has a car (188m streams, though you’d think it would be more), her wedding ballad about how far she and her baby have come (502m streams) and the song where she wants to forget she’s a lady (554m streams).
Both Jolene (611m streams) and 9 to 5 (567m streams) will never stop the pipeline to Dolly’s royalty stream, nor will Don Schlitz be short of money for writing The Gambler, which Kenny Rogers made a standard (373m streams). Live Like You Were Dying, the carpe diem standard by Tim McGraw, was back in the top sellers list this year when Apple reduced its price to celebrate 20 years since it first hit.
I asked Alex Evans aka DJ Trukka which songs captivate the room in which he plays them. Diane by Cam and Chicken Fried by Zac Brown Band were in his list, as was Beer Never Broke My Heart by Luke Combs, which actually segues well into and out of Friends In Low Places.
As if by magic, the NOW Music series recently announced the latest iteration of Now That’s What I Call Country, and all the usual suspects are present and correct. Track one on Disc One? Jolene. There’s also Need You Now, Crazy, Blanket On The Ground, Stand By Your Man, Rose Garden and You’re Still The One, with four country versions of big pop ballads closing the first disc: How Do I Live by Trisha Yearwood, I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing by Mark Chesnutt, When You Say Nothing At All by Keith Whitley and The Wind Beneath My Wings by Lee Greenwood.
Disc Two is the 2000-present day disc, kicking off with Keith Urban, always the most crucial of the Thurbans, and running through Luke Combs (Hurricane), Little Big Town (Girl Crush), Maren Morris (The Bones) and The Shires (My Universe), probably because they are a Sony act and Sony Music owns the rights to the NOW Music brand.
Look here! It’s Dancing by Kylie Minogue and All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow, proving that anything can be country so long as you put a sticker on it. Disc Three begins with Let Your Love Flow by The Bellamy Brothers and runs through some other timeless classics from the 1960s and 1970s: Wichita Lineman, The Gambler, Ode To Billie Joe, Kiss An Angel Good Morning and I Can Help by Billy Swan. There’s also the country waltz Labelled With Love by Squeeze, a country outfit from Deptford, South London.
Disc Four gives us Islands In The Stream, I Love A Rainy Night, Before He Cheats, Achy Breaky Heart and, back to back, Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Duelling Banjos. If you put that disc on at a party, you will not skip one song, which I imagine is the point: Boot Scootin’ Boogie, Redneck Woman, Sweet Home Alabama, Copperhead Road by Steve Earle, Elvira by The Oak Ridge Boys, Margaritaville, Dance The Night Away, Ring of Fire. Come oooon!!
All it takes is an advert, TV show or movie to kick these songs into the public consciousness as large. We can’t let Mr Brightside and Iris by Goo Goo Dolls (which is also perpetually skating in the nineties in the UK charts) be the only consensus hits with guitars on them. Country has dozens of potential smashes, and it won’t take a Luke Combs cover to bring them back to life.
The recent Country Countdown, compiled by the Official Charts Company and broadcast over C2C weekend on Radio 2, lacks Cruise for the inane reason that Meant To Be has been streamed many more times (1.36bn on Spotify, which is triple Cruise’s numbers). Rather than treat it seriously, let’s consider the countdown and see if the tracks are worthy of their evergreen status.
Your Man by Josh Turner? Yes, a super Stapleton composition. One Thing Right by Marshmello and Kane Brown? No, it sounds like 2019. I Hope by Gabby Barrett? No, for the same reason. The Git Up? Do me a favour.
How Do I Live, written by Diane Warren and sung by both Trisha Yearwood and LeAnn Rimes, will outlast us all. The robot/human children of the future will probably get married to a song that is one of the biggest of all Hot 100 hits. It’s all in the key change (verse in E, chorus in D). Amazed by Lonestar is just direct, and helped the band score a direct hit on the pop and country charts.
In Case You Didn’t Know by Brett Young is number 21 on this weird chart; it might be your own wedding song, which means Brett can headline Highways festival at the Royal Albert Hall and lead a singalong of what is a great melody and timeless sentiment. Ditto Beautiful Crazy and Speechless, which are more musical gloop gloop but were absent due to other songs, in Dan + Shay’s case 10,000 Hours and in Luke’s When It Rains It Pours.
That song rivals Chicken Fried as a full-throated evergreen; both are on the countdown, along with Something In The Orange by Zach Bryan, with 786m Spotify streams. Someone recently called Charli XCX a ‘niche star’, and I would consider Radiohead, REM and Zach to be the same. He is beloved by millions and, unlike those three acts, boasts a Hot 100 number one song (I Remember Everything, 474m streams); he’s got three dates at what used to be called the Staples Center lined up along with some stadium dates over summer 2024.
Johnny Cash’s treatment of Hurt is tied in with its immediate posthumous success and the literally iconic video. Who, in all fairness, will be playing Morgan Wallen’s music in 2050? That’s like playing Matchbox 20 today, and they were a punchline in the Barbie movie. Johnny Cash, who was born nearly a century ago, remains an evergreen country artist.
To round off this piece, it is smart that Beyoncé has covered Jolene, a song well known outside country music circles. I wonder how quickly her version overtakes the 611m streams of Dolly’s. I predict that the two singers will play it together at the CMA Awards or, if they don’t want a repeat of the Daddy Lessons farrago, the Grammy awards. It has an outside chance of catching fire and becoming the number one song in America, which would add Jolene to the list of songs which topped the Hot 100 in both its original form and as a cover.
It would be the first composition by a country artist. The others are as follows, and you can judge for yourselves if the songs are evergreens or not.
Go Away Little Girl: original by Steve Lawrence, cover by Donnie Osmond
The Locomotion: original by Little Eva, cover by Grand Funk Railroad
Please Mr Postman: original by The Marvelettes, cover by The Carpenters
Venus: original by Shocking Blue, cover by Bananarama
Lean On Me: original by Bill Withers, cover by Club Nouveau
You Keep Me Hanging On: original by The Supremes, cover by Kim Wilde
When A Man Loves A Woman: original by Percy Sledge, cover by Michael Bolton
I’ll Be There: original by The Jackson Five, cover by Mariah Carey ft Trey Lorenz
Lady Marmalade: original by Labelle, cover by the five ladies who recorded a version for the movie Moulin Rouge
A Country Way of Life 