Traditional Country Music - Fifth Generation (1990s)

Fifth Generation (1990s)

Country music was aided by the FCC's Docket 80-90, which led to a significant expansion of FM radio in the 1980s by adding numerous higher-fidelity FM signals to rural and suburban areas. At this point, country music was mainly heard on rural AM radio stations; the expansion of FM was particularly helpful to country music, which migrated to FM from the AM band as AM became overcome by talk radio (the country music stations that stayed on AM developed the classic country format for the AM audience). At the same time, beautiful music stations already in rural areas began abandoning the format (leading to its effective demise) to adopt country music as well. This wider availability of country music led to producers seeking to polish their product for a wider audience. Another force leading to changes in the country music industry was the changing sound of rock music, which was increasingly being influenced by the noisier, less melodic alternative rock scene. "New country" ended up absorbing rock influence from more electric musicians that were too melodic for modern rock but too electric for the classic country music sound. (A number of "classic rock" artists, especially Southern rock ones such as Charlie Daniels and Lynyrd Skynyrd, are more closely associated with the modern country music scene than that of the modern rock scene.)

In the 1990s, country music became a worldwide phenomenon thanks to Billy Ray Cyrus and Garth Brooks. The latter enjoyed one of the most successful careers in popular music history, breaking records for both sales and concert attendance throughout the decade. The RIAA has certified his recordings at a combined (128× platinum), denoting roughly 113 million U.S. shipments. Other artists that experienced success during this time included Clint Black, Sammy Kershaw, Aaron Tippin, Travis Tritt, Alan Jackson and the newly formed duo of Brooks & Dunn; George Strait, whose career began in the 1980s, also continued to have widespread success in this decade and beyond. Toby Keith began his career as a more pop-oriented country singer in the 1990s, evolving into an outlaw persona in the late 1990s with Pull My Chain and its follow-up, Unleashed.

Female artists such as Reba McEntire, Faith Hill, Martina McBride, Deana Carter, LeAnn Rimes, Shania Twain, and Mary Chapin Carpenter all released platinum selling albums in the 1990s.

The Dixie Chicks became one of the most popular country bands in the 1990s and early 2000s. Their 1998 debut album Wide Open Spaces went on to become certified 12x platinum while their 1999 album Fly went on to become 10x platinum. After their third album, Home, was released in 2003, the band made political news in part because of lead singer Natalie Maines's comments disparaging then-President George W. Bush while the band was overseas (Maines stated that she and her bandmates were ashamed to be from the same state as Bush, who had just commenced the Iraq War a few days prior). The comments caused a rift between the band and the country music scene, and the band's fourth (and, to date, final) album, 2006's Taking the Long Way, took a more rock-oriented direction; the album was commercially successful overall but largely ignored among country audiences. (The band is currently on hiatus as Maines pursues a solo career; in the meantime, the two other members are continuing with their side project, the Court Yard Hounds.)

In the early-mid-1990s, country western music was influenced by the popularity of line dancing. This influence was so great that Chet Atkins was quoted as saying "The music has gotten pretty bad, I think. It's all that damn line dancing." By the end of the decade, however, at least one line dance choreographer complained that good country line dance music was no longer being released.