Music for the tortured soul

I love me a good list, so I went through my iTunes and picked out the country tunes I'd liked at one point or another. I came up with a list of 184. The vast majority were from the late 80s-early 90s. The stuff my folks played when I was younger and I grew up on. Then there's a gap you get a handful of songs from the late 90s, stragglers that got through my wall of alt-rock. Include a band like the Dixie Chicks in this group. Then another big gap and you get to the poppish 'country' I started to like in the late 2000s. Ryan Adams, The Wreckers, Dustin Kensrue, Taylor Swift.

So from that list of 184 I decided I was gonna narrow it down to my top ten country tunes of all time. I made another list and went through the 184, taking any song I could conceivably see being near my Top 10. Well ho-ly-shit I wound up with 30 and they were all so awesome I decided that my top ten would be expanded by 20 tracks.

I did, however, rank 'em.

If you know anything about these tunes, you'll probably notice a distinct theme...

1 - George Strait - I can still make Cheyanne
2 - Tracy Lawrence - Texas Tornado
3 - Keith Whitley - I'm over you
4 - Garth Brooks - The dance
5 - Little Texas - White might have been
6 - McBride & the Ride - Sacred Ground
7 - Garth Brooks - What she's doing now
8 - Dixie Chicks - You were mine
9 - Diamond Rio - You're gone
10 - Keith Whitley - When you say nothing at all
11 - Alan Jackson - Gone crazy
12 - Taylor Swift - Tim McGraw
13 - Tim McGraw - Don't take the girl
14 - Trisha Yearwood - She's in love with the boy
15 - Vince Gill - Whenever you come around
16 - Tim McGraw - It's your love
17 - The Wreckers - Lay me down
18 - Little Texas - My love
19 - Ryan Adams - Wonderwall
20 - Sawyer Brown - All these years
21 - The Wreckers - Tennessee
22 - John Michael Montgomery - How was I to know
23 - Jow Diffie - Night to remember
24 - Vince Gill - Trying to get over you
25 - Clint Black - Still holding on
26 - Patty Loveless - You don't even know who I am
27 - Ty Herndon - A man holding on to a woman letting go
28 - The Wreckers - The good kind
29 - Shania Twain - The woman in me
30 - Toby Keith - You shouldn't kiss me like this

By my count, eight of the top ten are about a relationship that's done. 20 of the thirty. It's music for the broken-hearted, no joke.

That said, it's so fucking good. I haven't listened to the majority of these tunes in many years and giving this PL a listen now it's easy to see why I loved them all in the first place.