Some of country music’s biggest hits were released in the 1980s. And some of those songs are so beloved, even people who aren’t country music fans gravitate towards them. These four country songs are so nostalgic that everyone should know them.
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“He Stopped Loving Her Today” by George Jones
It’s hard to imagine any music fan not knowing “He Stopped Loving Her Today” by George Jones. Released at the start of the decade, on Jones’ 1980 I Am What I Am album, the song is not only considered one of the best country songs of all time, but also one of the saddest.
Written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam, Jones almost didn’t record “He Stopped Loving Her Today”. In his I Lived To Tell It All autobiography, Jones recalls how wrong he was about the song. In fact, Jones told his producer, Billy Sherrill, that the song was too “morbid” for anyone to record it.
Fortunately, Jones was wrong, and “He Stopped Loving Her Today” became Jones’ first No. 1 hit in six years.
“Whoever’s In New England” by Reba McEntire
Few country songs have as much heartache and resignation as Reba McEntire’s “Whoever’s In New England”. Released in 1986 as the title track of McEntire’s tenth studio album, Kendal Franceschi and Quentin Powers wrote the tragic song, which says in part, “When whoever’s in New England is through with you / And Boston finds better things to do / You know it’s not too late / ‘Cause you’ll always have a place to come back to / When whoever’s in New England is through with you.“
“Whoever’s In New England” might be a sad country song, but it created a new chapter for McEntire. After acting in the video for the song, her first, McEntire realized she loved being an actress as well as a singer.
“Elvira” by The Oak Ridge Boys
Dallas Frazier wrote “Elvira“, which remains one of The Oak Ridge Boys’ biggest hits of their extraordinary career. The song was first released by Frazier, before The Oak Ridge Boys had a platinum-selling, No. 1 hit with the song in 1981.
“Elvira” is on The Oak Ridge Boys’ Fancy Free album. The Oak Ridge Boys didn’t know the song would be such a big hit. But they did know that it was magic in the studio.
“We get in the studio with the musicians, and we sang through it a couple of times,” Bonsall later told NPR. “I think we sang through it three times. All I remember about that session was everybody was smiling, everybody was having fun, and it worked out well.”
“Eighteen Wheels And A Dozen Roses” by Kathy Mattea
Kathy Mattea released “Eighteen Wheels And A Dozen Roses” in 1988, on her Untasted Honey album. Written by Gene Nelson and Paul Nelson, the sweet love song tells the story of a man who is finishing his last run as a long-distance truck driver before retiring to spend time with his wife.
The song says, “Eighteen wheels and a dozen roses / Ten more miles on his four-day run / A few more songs from the all-night radio / Then he’ll spend the rest of his life with the one that he loves.”
Earlier this year, Mattea was in the middle of performing this song when she was invited to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
Photo by David Redfern/Redferns
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