Even when you’re in a perfectly loving relationship, it can still be fun to blast breakup songs in the car and roll the windows down. Here are a few 90s country songs that are great to sing along to, even if you don’t relate.
“How Was I To Know” by Reba McEntire
In “How Was I To Know”, Reba takes a classic tale of what could be heartbreak and turns it into a triumphant ballad about being okay on your own. In the chorus of this 1996 single, McEntire sings:
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How was I to know that I’d be okay
Thought I’d lose it all when you walked away
How was I to know I would be the strong
I had what it takes all along
How was I to know?
“I Can Still Make Cheyenne” by George Strait
This one was written by Aaron Barker and Erv Woolsey, George Strait’s then manager. The idea for “I Can Still Make Cheyenne” came out of a conversation they’d had over the phone.
“[Woolsey] told me he had this (song) idea about this cowboy who calls home and says, ‘I’m gonna come home,’” Barker told The Tennessean. “His wife or girlfriend or whatever just says, ‘Don’t even come home. You’re gone all the time. I’m out of here.’”
If you listen to this one, it’s exactly that. A cowboy calls his lover to tell her that she’s coming home, but she reveals that she’s already met somebody else. For rodeo cowboys, this one is a true anthem.
“Blame It On Your Heart” by Patty Loveless
This song takes a breakup on from a more spunky, upbeat angle. Even though this is one of Loveless’ biggest hits now, she wasn’t too keen on cutting it back in the day.
“We decided that Patty Loveless had to hear this song and she should be the one that did it,” Kostas Lazarides, a co-writer on the song, explained to the Country Music Hall of Fame. “So from that point on for the next three or four months that was our diligence. That’s what we focused on doing. But she kept rejecting this song. She called it a diddy, and her producers thought the same thing…”
Ironically, “Blame It On Your Heart” would end up giving Loveless her first No. 1 single in four years.
Photo by: Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Susan G. Komen
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