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The Newnan, Georgia, traditionalist who kept country sounding like country while the rest of Nashville went pop. Alan Jackson water-skied through the "Chattahoochee" video in red cowboy boots, racked up 35 number ones, and once walked off the CMA stage mid-song to stand up for George Jones.
Key the truck, carve your name in the seats, take a Louisville Slugger to the headlights. Carrie Underwood's revenge anthem crossed over from country radio to everywhere in 2006–07, spent 64 straight weeks on the Hot 100, and became — for a time — the best-selling country song, period.
The duo that put the boogie in every boot-scootin' bar of the '90s. Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn were paired by a record executive in 1988, sent their first four singles to number one, and turned "Boot Scootin' Boogie" into the song that dragged line dancing back onto America's dance floors.
Three Texans with a fiddle, a banjo, and two diamond albums in two years. Wide Open Spaces and Fly made the Dixie Chicks the biggest group in country, "Goodbye Earl" made murder a sing-along, and then one sentence on a London stage in March 2003 got them pulled from country radio almost overnight.
The voice that floated out of every car radio in 1998 riding a nectarine through a CGI garden. Faith Hill went from "Wild One" to "This Kiss" to "Breathe," the biggest single of 2000, and took country to the pop charts, the Super Bowl, and the CoverGirl counter, with Tim McGraw beside her from 1996 on.
Garth Brooks made country music arena-sized. The wireless headset, the hit-after-hit albums, and "Friends in Low Places" became the sound of the '90s — country that didn't apologize for being enormous, and made it look like the point all along.
A bartender from Pocahontas, Illinois, who had spent nearly twenty years singing in other people's bars released "Redneck Woman" in March 2004 and had country radio's first female number one in two years within two months. Gretchen Wilson's debut sold five million copies, and the mud-splattered video made her the face of a louder, prouder kind of country for a couple of summers.
Flip-flops, a straw hat, and a stadium full of people who had never been to the Caribbean singing about it anyway. Kenny Chesney turned "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems" into a brand and the 2000s into one long beach party, winning four ACM Entertainer of the Year awards in a row and building the biggest touring career in Billboard's country ledger.
Born in 1982, LeAnn Rimes released "Blue" at thirteen in 1996 and became an overnight country sensation with an impossibly mature voice. She won Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 1997, becoming the youngest person ever to win those awards. Her 1997 ballad "How Do I Live" spent a record 69 weeks on the Hot 100—Billboard later ranked it the most successful song of the 1990s.
Rows of strangers in boots doing the same grapevine at the same time. In 1992 a record label's marketing stunt for "Achy Breaky Heart" and a Brooks & Dunn B-side turned country-bar line dancing into a national craze, and for a few years every country bar, wedding reception, and hotel lounge seemed to have a floor full of people counting steps.
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.
Canadian country-pop crossover sensation in leopard print and confidence. She sold albums by the tens of millions, and for a moment the whole world was her pickup-truck ballad audience.
The curly-haired country teenager with a guitar who ended the 2000s as the name on everyone's radio. "Love Story" and Fearless made her a household name; the Kanye moment made her a headline. Everything after is a much bigger story—this entry is about when she was new.
The son of a World Series pitcher who made every girl at the county fair cry at "Don't Take the Girl." Tim McGraw went from a flop debut to the best-selling country album of 1994, married Faith Hill on the road, and closed his decade with "Live Like You Were Dying," the song he cut the year his father died.
"How do you like me now?" The Oklahoma singer whose 2000 comeback single became the year's biggest country song, and whose post-9/11 "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" got him bumped from an ABC Fourth of July special, into a feud with the Dixie Chicks, and through a decade as country's loudest patriot.