What an era the 90s were in country music. The decade launched the careers of numerous artists who are still revered as the pinnacle of the genre. Not surprisingly, much of their success can be attributed to the songs they recorded, songs that are still being played today.
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With that in mind, we picked four well-worn country hits that almost everyone raised in that decade can still sing by heart today.
“Friends In Low Places” by Garth Brooks
Even people who have never listened to country music can likely sing “Friends In Low Places” by heart. Released by Garth Brooks in 1990, the song is still just as popular, 35 years later.
Written by Dewayne Blackwell and Earl Bud Lee, the song says in part, “I’ve got friends in low places / Where the whiskey drowns and the beer chases my blues away / And I’ll be okay / Yeah, I’m not big on social graces / Think I’ll slip on down to the oasis / Oh, I’ve got friends in low places.“
Brooks likes “Friends In Low Places” so much that it is also the name of his Nashville bar.
“I don’t mean to be egotistical,” Brooks said. “Friends in Low Places’ is a chapter in country music. It needs to be here,” Brooks tells CBS News. Then, he explained the difference between a bar and a honky tonk. “A bar is a place usually where just locals come like you saw [on] ‘Cheers’. A honky tonk’s probably got a dance floor and is a little bit bigger. It’s like a dance hall.”
“I Like It, I Love It” by Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw has released plenty of hits since his self-titled freshman album came out in 1993. But perhaps none are as much of an earworm, in the best way possible, as “I Like It, I Love It.”
Written by Jeb Stuart Anderson, Steve Dukes, and Mark Hall, the feel-good song says, “But I like it, I love it, I want some more of it / I try so hard, I can’t rise above it / Don’t know what it is ’bout that little girl’s lovin’ / But I like it, I love it, I want some more of it.”
Surprisingly, although it remains one of McGraw’s biggest hits, and one he still performs in his live shows, he didn’t love the song at first.
“I didn’t think much about recording it,” McGraw admits (via The Boot). “I was kind of cold on it, and I listened to it again, and for some reason, it hit me a whole lot different the second time around. And then when we went in and cut the track, the track just turned out so fun and so cool that it really didn’t matter how much I liked it anymore after we got to the track, because I loved it after that.”
“Heads Carolina, Tails California” by Jo Dee Messina
“Heads Carolina, Tails California” is Jo Dee Messina’s first single that she ever released. Out in 1996, the song, written by Tim Nichols and Mark D. Sanders, remains one of Messina’s biggest hits of her career.
The catchy song says, “Heads Carolina, tails California / Somewhere greener, somewhere warmer / Up in the mountains, down by the ocean / Where it don’t matter as long as we’re goin’ / Somewhere together, I’ve got a quarter / Heads Carolina, tails California.“
The country song is on Messina’s eponymous debut record, although it almost didn’t make it. McGraw was producing it with Byron Gallimore, allowing the last-minute addition once they heard the song.
“My first album was done,” Messina recalls (via WTOP). “And one of the writers called me like, ‘Hey Jo Dee, I’ve got this song.’ I listened to it and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is really cool.’ So I brought it to my producers. They were like, ‘Man, we gotta put this on the record.’ So we went back into the studio and recorded it as an afterthought. It wasn’t something we had scripted for the album. It was the very last minute and the very first single!”
In 2022, Cole Swindell paid homage to the song with his hit single, “She Had Me At Heads Carolina“.
“Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus
It would be hard to find anyone raised in the 90s who didn’t know “Achy Breaky Heart“. The song, released by Billy Ray Cyrus in 1992 as the first single from his freshman Some Gave All album, quickly became the song that was heard all over the world.
Not only did “Ahcy Breaky Heart” become a multi-week No. 1 hit for Cyrus, but it also became the soundtrack for the ever-popular line dances of that decade.
Don Von Tress wrote “Achy Breaky Heart” by himself. The simple song says, “But don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart / I just don’t think he’d understand / And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart / He might blow up and kill this man.”
The success of “Achy Breaky Heart” is indisputable to Cyrus. But Cyrus says it also hurt him in country music, when other genres played it as well.
“I was persecuted,” he tells The Tennessean. “Because back then country claimed me and then got mad when pop stations started playing it.”
Photo by Neil Kitson/Redferns/Getty Images
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