George Strait Latest Greatest Straitest Hits (MCA Nashville)
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If it were only bitter young upstarts who had a beef with the country music industry, the trend could be explained away as sour grapes. But as Jon Langford put it in the Waco Brothers’ “Death of Country Music” a few years ago, living legends like George Jones and Johnny Cash can’t get on the radio either. Jones had to nearly die in an auto accident last year for his excellent single “Choices” to earn moderate airplay, and he was still dissed by the Country Music Association before its annual awards show in September. They invited him to sing the song on the show–or, rather, an excerpt of the song, even though the whole thing is only three and a half minutes long. Understandably, Jones declined and stayed home from the ceremonies. The whole affair passed without comment until, during the live broadcast, Alan Jackson got up to sing his latest single, a cover of the Jim Ed Brown classic “Pop a Top.” Halfway through his performance, the longhaired traditionalist–one of country’s biggest stars in the 90s–segued into “Choices,” saluting Jones with one hand and flipping off Nashville with the other.
Kicking off Latest Greatest Straitest Hits, the Texan’s fourth greatest-hits collection, are two new songs. One is the current hit single “The Best Day,” a nauseatingly sweet slice of profamily hokum. The other, a duet with Jackson, is “Murder on Music Row,” which was written and originally recorded by bluegrass artist Larry Cordle. The lyrics lambaste the country music industry for cutting out the “heart and soul” of country music. “The almighty dollar and the lust for worldwide fame / Slowly killed tradition and for that someone should hang,” sings Jackson. He laments how steel guitar and fiddle have been supplanted by “drums and rock ‘n’ roll guitars mixed up in your face,” and together he and Strait bemoan the fact that “old Hank” and “the Hag” wouldn’t have a chance of scoring airplay these days.
