The Major Difference Between Toby Keith and George Jones Country, According to the Songwriter Behind Both Their Hits

Behind every great country star, there is often an equally fantastic country songwriter, and the same is certainly true of celebrities like Toby Keith, George Jones, and their mutual collaborator, Bobby Braddock. While Braddock’s name isn’t as instantly recognizable as Keith or Jones, he crafted many of the hit country songs we know and love today, like Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” Keith’s “Talk About Me,” and Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.”

Braddock’s impressive career has spanned multiple decades and just as many variants of the country music style, which gave him the unique advantage of knowing exactly what made Jones’ era of country music different from Keith’s. (And no, it’s not just the amount of autotune and reverb in the mix, although that’s helpful, too.)

The Major Difference Between Toby Keith and George Jones

While speaking to Fresh Air host Terry Gross in 2010, songwriter Bobby Braddock summed up the main difference between Toby Keith and George Jones country music in one Yiddish word: chutzpah. Although Braddock can identify some eras of country music by technical aspects of the mix, like the amount of reverb, delay, or autotune on the vocals, he said that he could always point out Keith’s music because of his brash and unapologetic attitude.

Speaking as someone well-acquainted with country music from the late 1960s through the 2000s, Braddock argued that attitudes like Keith’s were virtually unheard of in pre-1990s country music. “Toby’s got quite a bit of attitude. George comes from a different era, and it’s more of a—from the perspective of somebody, maybe, who does not have as much self-confidence. And this was an era when country music was about, she went off and left me, you know. My heart’s broken. I can’t imagine Toby Keith saying, ‘Baby, you left me, I love you so much. Please come back to me.’”

“Country singers did a lot of that back in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” Braddock continued. “You don’t hear as much about that now. They inject themselves into the songs personally a lot, too. You know, you hear a songwriter saying, ‘Well, I wouldn’t say that.’”

The Possum Had A Special Way About Him, Too

The fact that Toby Keith had a cocksure demeanor isn’t the only reason why he wouldn’t have made sense performing sentimental heartbreak songs like George “Possum” Jones. To the latter singer’s credit, he had quite the inimitable way about him, too. Even Bobby Braddock agreed that someone else from the same time period singing Jones’ 1980 hit, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” wouldn’t have worked. “I think in the hands of anyone other than George Jones, it would’ve been really schmaltzy,” Braddock said during his 2010 Fresh Air interview. “There’s such an intense believability about it.”

With good reason, too. According to Braddock, Jones was in the studio cutting vocals for the lost-love song when his ex, Tammy Wynette, came into the control room with her new boyfriend. “So, as George sang it, he was looking in the control room, and Tammy’s face was—I mean, Tammy Wynette, the love of George Jones’ life at that time, her face was illuminated, and he was looking right at her as he sang that song. That’s the take that we hear. So, I think that probably put a little more poignancy into what was going on that day.”

And to be fair to Keith, the idea of Jones performing a country rap like the former artist’s 2001 hit single, “I Wanna Talk About Me,” seems equally ridiculous. It just goes to show: part of being a great songwriter like Braddock means knowing which song should go where.

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