Rascal Flatts
The three-part harmonies behind "Bless the Broken Road" and the Cars version of "Life Is a Highway." Rascal Flatts were sneered at as country's boy band and had 2006's second-best-selling album, behind only High School Musical, winning the CMA's Vocal Group of the Year six years running while "What Hurts the Most" spent a year on the Hot 100.
Gary LeVox and Jay DeMarcus are second cousins from Columbus, Ohio. DeMarcus moved to Nashville in 1992 and in 1997 talked LeVox into coming down to sing harmonies on a gospel record he was producing. DeMarcus was also leading Chely Wright's band, where he met guitarist Joe Don Rooney from Picher, Oklahoma. One night at the Fiddle and Steel Guitar Bar in Printer's Alley, the cousins' part-time guitarist could not make it, Rooney filled in, and the three sang Shenandoah's "The Church on Cumberland Road" together; by their own account the chemistry was instant. Lyric Street signed them in September 1999 on the strength of a three-song demo.
"Prayin' for Daylight" reached number three in 2000, "These Days" gave them a first number one in 2002, and Feels Like Today, in 2004, topped the Billboard 200. Its second single was "Bless the Broken Road," written a decade earlier by Marcus Hummon, Bobby Boyd, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Jeff Hanna and already recorded by several acts; the Flatts version spent five weeks at number one in early 2005, their longest run, and won the Grammy for Best Country Song. Me and My Gang, released in April 2006, sold 722,000 copies in its first week, the biggest debut of the year, and finished 2006 as the second-best-selling album in the country behind the High School Musical soundtrack. "What Hurts the Most" topped both the country and adult-contemporary charts and spent 51 weeks on the Hot 100.
That summer their cover of Tom Cochrane's "Life Is a Highway" was in Pixar's Cars. It was never sent to country radio, but stations played it anyway, it reached number seven on the Hot 100, one spot below Cochrane's 1991 original, and the video put the three of them in vintage cars at a drive-in standing in for Lightning McQueen, Doc Hudson, and Mater. It has since become their most-streamed song. The CMA named them Vocal Group of the Year every year from 2003 to 2008, and a 2007 Weekly Reader poll of more than two thousand kids ranked them the sixth most popular act among ten-to-twelve-year-olds.
Nashville's old guard was not charmed. USA Today's Brian Mansfield noted the "clean-cut looks, showy vocals and pop-influenced arrangements" that got them lumped with boy-band knockoffs, and DeMarcus recalled Alabama's Randy Owen grabbing him at the CMA Awards: "Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You're just taking over the spot we were in 20 years ago." They played Wrigley Field in 2009, announced a farewell in 2020, disbanded in 2021, and announced a reunion in 2024 that became a 25th-anniversary tour.
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