Country Music Top 100

Country Music Television has produced a list of the 100 top country songs of all time.
Lists like this have only two purposes–to provoke arguments and to remind you of fine songs that you may not have thought of lately. There is lots to agree with, and lots to disagree with. For example, how anyone could put anything ever sung by Charlie Rich in the top 1,000,000 songs of any genre is beyond me.
On the other hand, it’s fun to see George Strait’s “Amarillo By Morning” at number 12. As far as I’m concerned, George could easily fill out 25 of the top 100.
And we have Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” which we talked about a week or two ago when June Carter Cash, one of the song’s authors, passed away. A great, great song. And there’s Roger Miller’s “King of the Road,” Marty Robbins’ “El Paso”–truly one of the great songs of all time–at number 42. And how about the Eagles’ “Desperado” (#46), Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You” (#49), Charlie Pride’s “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” (#58), and newer tunes like Faith Hill’s “Breathe” (#38), Vince Gill’s “Go Rest High on that Mountain” (#60) and Alison Krauss’s “When You Say Nothing at All” (#64). And a brand new/old favorite: Gene Autry’s “Back In the Saddle Again” (#99), which I heard for the first time in a great restaurant at the top of a mountain pass in Alaska a couple of months ago in what must have been a remastered version. Beautiful.
And that just scratches the surface. We’ve talked off and on about what Trunk calls “the country of country.” Just pondering this list reminds us what a fine country it is. If you’re not already a country music fan, you should check it out.

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