Popmatters.com is in the midst of doing the contentious and thankless job of counting down the “Top 100 All-Time Best Country Songs.” As they mention:
We kept this list, in the words of Strait, pure country: No Wilco. No Flying Burrito Brothers. No Old 97’s. No alt-country—there’s a time and place for honoring those heroes, and this ain’t it.
We based this list on two things: popularity and our own opinions. Just because a song was popular, however, doesn’t mean it made the cut. Same goes for the quality of the songs; because of space restrictions, we had to leave a bunch of our faves on the editing-room floor.
Still, in our opinions, these are indeed the 100 best country songs of all time. Let the disagreeing begin.
Yeah it’s the list is littered with pop-country drek like Garth, McGraw and the Judds but with #45 bing Jerry Lee Lewis’ “39 and Holding†and # 64 being Emmylou Harris’ & Gram Parsons’ “Love Hurts†it ain’t all bad….so far
That list baffles me. Johnny Cash covering NIN is in, but the Flying Burrito Brothers are out?
Yeah, It is bit wacky like that. I guess it’s the messenger that counts more t past 1han the message. I see a lot of pop-country that I wouldn’t necessarily classify as hard or “pure” county. Actually nothing past 1949.