September 30, 2026 • 51 mins
Bobby keeps moving through the biggest years of ’90s country with a look back at 1998. This time around, he revisits The Chicks breaking wide open with Wide Open Spaces, Jo Dee Messina’s breakout, Faith Hill crossing over with “This Kiss,” Garth Brooks releasing Double Live, Vince Gill finally earning his first No. 1 country album, and Steve Wariner’s emotional hit “Holes in the Floor of Heaven.” Bobby also looks back at major moments involving Kenny Chesney, Johnny Cash, and Tammy Wynette, while sharing stories and conversations with the artists who helped define the year. Plus, he steps outside country music for Britney Spears, TRL, The Truman Show, the start of his own radio career, and more from 1998.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Welcome back to the 90s Country Podcast. This episode is
all about 1998. A year where a handful of artists
started feeling established and a couple records ended up defining
the year by pure staying power. We're counting down the
top 10 country music moments. We'll go 10 to 1,
so let's get into it. Number 10. It's a big
year for Terry Clark, Leanne Womack, and Mark Wills. If
(00:35):
you look at 1998 beyond the big headliners, there were
a few names quietly taking that next step in their career,
but not in some loud, flashy way. in a way
that changes how artists start to feel about their own
career finally paying off. And we'll talk about Terry Clark,
Leanne Womack, Mark Wills, because 1998 is one of those
years for them. Terry Clark's road to 1998, not a
(00:57):
straight shot. She came to Nashville from Canada at a
young age. And she did the grind thing first. Playing, writing,
learning the town, learning what kinds of songs fit her,
and figuring out how to stand out without turning into
something that felt fabricated. By the mid-90s, she's already on
the radio, she's beginning to build a good run for herself,
but she's living in that frustrating zone a lot of
(01:18):
artists get into in their career. It's a zone where
success is close, but you're just not quite there, and
you're definitely not quite at the top yet. She's putting
out singles that do pretty well, she's earning fans, and
she's proving that she can hang. But that defining number
one song moment still hasn't happened. Then 1998 arrives. And
that's the year all that hard work finally pays off
(01:40):
when she lands her first number one with your easy
on the eyes. And when you think about how far
she had to come, this was a memorable moment for Terry.
I mean, she moved countries. She spent years chasing the dream.
She had songs that were close, but weren't quite there.
She had done the travel, the early mornings, the constant
proving that she belonged. But by getting that first number
(02:01):
one in 1998, it was a moment where she could
finally exhale and say, okay, it's finally working. That she
wasn't just trying to make it. She was actually doing it.
That's why Terry's 1998 belongs in this conversation. It's not
a trend. It's not a lucky break. It's not about
the first major moment. It's about an artist that's been
grinding for a long time that finally has it happen.
(02:21):
I talked to Terry about her origin story moving from
Canada to Nashville. And this is what she said.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I had gone to live with my grandparents in Ontario
for about six months before I moved to Nashville. Long
story there. But I ended up, my mom flew from Alberta.
to Ontario and her and one of her very best
friends who'd known me since I was a little baby,
we all decided it was just time for me to
go to Nashville. I had been waiting on a legal
way to move here. I didn't have a green card.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
I know a lot of people that didn't wait for
that part of it. They just, they did it the
non-super legal way.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Well, I did it the non-super legal way. And we
just said, you know what?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I was 18 years old and I was getting depressed
because this was my destiny and I had to be here.
And so moved to in a Honda Civic with a
guitar in the backseat and everything I owned. And man,
the days of life being so simple that everything you
own can fit in the backseat of a car. We
crossed the border and the border agent's looking in the backseat.
He sees these two women with this teenager in the
back and he's like, where are you ladies headed?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Who was with you?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
My mom, Linda, and her friend, Pat.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Pat was driving. Pat's a solid friend then.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
She's solid until we found out she had pot in
the car after we got across the border.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
But that's a whole other story. You know what? Oh
my gosh. Could have derailed the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I don't think I've told anybody that yet, but I
don't think Pat would care.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It's legal in Canada now.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Anyway, so we crossed the border and the border agents
look in the backseat at the guitar and we're thinking
we're going to be in trouble because we know we
have no intention of actually bringing me back to Canada.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
We're just leaving me there.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
You don't say that, right?
Speaker 5 (03:54):
No, no.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
We're going shopping. totally shopping just for.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
With your guitar totally just to play songs while you
buy turtlenecks.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Going well he said where are you going and so
Pat's like.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The Grand Ole Opry we're gonna go see the Grand
Ole Opry so they they thought these three broads are
on the way to Nashville to do with a Nashville
touristy thing the guitar and he didn't know that there
were only two coming back.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
For Leanne Womack 1998 is big because it's the year
that she proves her first chapter was not a one-time
thing She comes to Nashville, similar to Terry, doing the
behind-the-scenes work first, learning the town, learning the songs, fine-tuning
her sound and style. Then her debut song, Never Again Again,
really gained some momentum with fans and people in the industry.
(04:36):
But now she's got the challenge of trying to follow
that up. That's what 1998 gives her. Early in the year,
her debut album hits a real milestone when it's gold,
which means it's sold over 500,000 copies. This is important
because it says people didn't just want to hear one single,
that they stayed long enough to buy the record. In 1998,
(04:57):
she releases her second album, Some Things I Know. That's
the moment where the career shifts from introduction to continuity.
It's her showing she can deliver again with the same
core identity without needing a new storyline every six months.
In other words, 1998 wasn't her arrival. It's more of
her confirmation. It's the year she stops feeling like a
(05:18):
strong debut and starts feeling like someone who's going to
have a real run, which she does. Mark Wills moved
to Nashville from Blue Ridge, Georgia in the early 1990s
and went right into the demo singer grind, singing demos constantly,
then got discovered, then signed with Mercury Records. And while
he did put out a debut album in 1996 that
(05:38):
proved he could land singles, 1998 was the year that
it all started stacking up. On May 5th, 1998, He
releases Wish You Were Here, and it turns into an
album that gave him a real footprint in country music.
The album put out four top 10 country singles. It
climbed to the top 10 on the country albums chart.
It even sold over 1 million copies and hit platinum,
(06:02):
which solidified how good the album was. 1998 was all
about building momentum for Mark, and it set him up
for what came later in 1999, his first number one
and an ACM win. So that's why we start with Terry, Leanne,
and Mark. That's why they're at 10 on the 1998 countdown.
Because while the biggest names dominated the headlines, Terry, Leanne,
(06:24):
and Mark were artists quietly putting together the kind of
year that would put together a great career.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
Number nine.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Garth Brooks releases his Double Live album. If you're ranking 1998,
it's hard to leave Double Live out because very few
artists in any genre have ever put out monster numbers
like this on a live album. By this point in
the decade, Garth isn't trying to convince anyone of anything.
He's already been the defining country star of the 90s.
(06:52):
He's already proven he can sell albums at a level
that doesn't really compare to anybody. But what's interesting about
Double Live is it's not a new direction record. It's
more like a snapshot. This is what the Garth era
feels like when you capture it from the stage. The
album comes out November 17th, 1998. It's a two-disc live
record from performances through the 96 to 98 world tour.
(07:16):
And the reason it matters is because this wasn't just
one night from one of his favorite shows. It's years
of touring that showed just how consistent his shows were.
And then you get to the part that makes it
worthy of putting it on this countdown. Just sales. Double
Live sells over a million copies in its first week. Yeah,
first week. At the time, that was the highest first
(07:37):
week sales in SoundScan history. And that's a wild stat
for any album, much less a live album. Especially a
double album. Because mostly live albums and live records and
live songs are usually treated as a bonus. It's bonus material.
And this one is anything but bonus based on the numbers.
It's basically a major release. But not everybody can do that,
(07:59):
regardless of genre. But Garth Brooks did. By late 1998,
the Garth audience isn't just buying singles they like. They're
buying the full experience. Because that's what Garth was trying
to provide. They're buying the album. They're going to the tour.
They're buying everything around it. A live album becomes the
cleanest way to bottle that up. It's also a smart
move because it lets him re-center the story on performance,
(08:22):
which is really what his superstardom was based in. You
also have to remember the timing. This comes out as
the decade is nearing the finish line. And it lands
like the cherry on top of Garth Brooks in the 90s.
It's really just saying, here's the catalog. Also, here's the energy,
and mostly, here's what the era really was. And for fans,
(08:43):
it's a way to take the show home, for lack
of a better term, or take it to their car,
especially for people who couldn't see the tour, couldn't go
to the concert, or wanted to feel something closer to
it than just a studio track. Garth's own site now
calls it the best-selling live record in music history and
notes the album's massive certification and talks about that first
week number. And you don't have to hang the whole
(09:05):
story on that claim, But it does underline the point.
This wasn't a minor release. It wasn't an extra release,
which a lot of live albums are. It was legitimately
a major moment. So if you're talking about 1998 and
you're counting things down, Double Live belongs because it captures
Garth at full power. Not a concept. Not a hype.
(09:26):
It really measures it and you get to hear it live.
A live album that sells like that is basically in
its own category. It's one of the clearest Garth moments
of the entire decade. I once asked Garth about his
trick to connect with audiences so well during his live shows.
And this is what he said.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
I don't know if there's a trick. I just remember
that's what I grew up on. That's a crazy thing, man.
Anybody that's an artist grew up on two things. They
grew up on going to concerts and they grew up
on listening to the radio. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And then I asked Garth when he realized he could
really sing.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
I grew up in a house where my mom, I'm
going to put my mom in the top five female
vocals of all time. Not because she's my mom, because
she was fabulous.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Really? She was good, huh?
Speaker 5 (10:06):
She was amazing.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
She had a deal on Capitol. Gave it up to
raise six kids.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Very sweet.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
Our sister, talented, could play the hell out of any guitar.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Your mom had a deal?
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
A record deal.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
Yeah, she was great. We were just out in L.A.
in Capitol Studio. I think we were in Studio A.
She recorded in Studio B over there right next door,
and they had a session, so I couldn't go in there.
But so wanted to sneak in there and see where
she stood and where she recorded.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Number eight. Tammy Wynette's Hall of Fame honor and final goodbye. Okay,
so for the next spot on the 1998 countdown, it's
not about a song or an album release. It's about timing.
Because 1998 was the year that country music did two
things with Tammy Wynette at the same time. It inducted
her into the Country Music Hall of Fame and it
also sadly lost her. That combination was what made it
(10:57):
land so heavy. Hall of Fame moments were supposed to
feel like a victory lap. You know, the genre saying, hey,
this is permanent. You are part of the foundation. With Tammy,
it ended up feeling like the industry was honoring her
entire story and then immediately turning around and talking about
her in the past tense. So when people look back
at how she got there, it's one of the most
classic Nashville stories, a real Nashville climb. The only difference
(11:19):
was she didn't blend in ever. I mean, she had
a voice to cut through. She came to Nashville in
the mid 60s. And once she teamed up with producer
Billy Sherrill, her run began pretty quickly. It wasn't hype.
It was recognition because, again, her voice was so strong,
but she also sounded like somebody you already knew. 1968 happened.
That's when Stand By Your Man happened. And that turned
(11:41):
into a record that stamped her name onto the genre permanently.
People still sing it all the time, even at the
Opry today. It wasn't just a hit. It became her
signature song. The kind of song that people argued about
or quoted or used as a reference point for an
entire era. What separated Tammy is how real her songs
felt and what she sang about. I mean, that's why
people connected to her so deeply. It felt like her
(12:02):
music was speaking to you. It felt like she was
singing about something you knew about or lived. It was
something that people could relate to. And her songs, the hits,
they stacked up. My Elusive Dreams with David Houston went
number one. Not long after that, I Don't Want to
Play House hit number one as well. And that song
came with major industry recognition for the first time, including
a Grammy that pretty much said what everybody already knew.
(12:25):
She wasn't just popular. She was critically loved as well.
And she was becoming a defining voice in country music.
Then there was the duet chapter. And that became a
huge part of why her catalog stayed alive for so long.
The run with George Jones wasn't a side project. It
was a major lane of her career. Songs like Golden Ring,
The Jet Set, Two Story House, that one was massive.
(12:48):
Those records didn't feel like collaborations. They felt like real life.
And that's what it was because George and Tammy were
married during the string of hits they had together. And
by the time 1998 rolled around, Tammy's career had already
been a staple in the country music genre. She had
number one, she had awards, she had sales. She had
the reputation. She had major influence on up-and-coming artists, especially
(13:09):
female artists. So when the Hall of Fame induction happened
in 1998, it wasn't the genre saying, great career. It
was the genre admitting, officially, that a huge piece of
country music's identity had been shaped by her voice and
the way that she told stories, especially when it came
from a woman's perspective. Sadly, when she passed away that
same year, the Hall of Fame moment stopped just being
(13:30):
an honor and started feeling like the closing chapter for Tammy.
That's why this belongs in the 1998 countdown. It was
a culmination of Tammy Wynette's legacy, the climb, the peak,
the songs that outlived their release dates, the voice that
stayed a staple in the genre, and then finally, in 1998,
her goodbye. Hang tight. The Bobbycast will be right back.
(14:02):
Number 7 Johnny Cash's Grammy win causes controversy. There were
some moments in 1998 that happened on a stage, and
there were some that happened behind the scenes. Johnny Cash
was part of that second kind. Because on February 25th, 1998,
Johnny Cash went to the Grammys and walked out with
a reminder that his late 1990s chapter wasn't just nostalgia,
(14:26):
it was still competing, still winning, still a major part
of the genre. The 40th annual Grammy Awards were at
Radio City Music Hall in New York. And that night
he walked away with three awards total. Two of them
being Grammy Hall of Fame Awards for I Walked a
Line and Ring of Fire. And, you know, those two
made sense. Those were forever songs. That's what the Grammys
were saying. Like, these recordings help shape the genre and
(14:48):
they still hold up. But it was the third one
that made this a real 1998 moment. Best country album
for American 2 Unchained. The win mattered because this album
wasn't built like a standard late 90s Nashville project. Maybe
you've heard of this. It was his second album with
Rick Rubin on the American Recordings label, and it leaned
(15:09):
into covers and revisited older material, but it was done different.
It was stripped down. It was direct. It definitely wasn't
chasing what country radio was doing. And that's where the
tension came in, because the album got critical respect and
a lot of it. I mean, Rick Rubin was involved,
one of the greatest producers of, well, all time. I mean,
the guy had so many number ones with so many artists,
(15:30):
including the Beastie Boys. I mean, Jay-Z, now Johnny Cash.
But again, it was ignored by country radio. His single,
which was a cover of Soundgarden's Rusty Cage, did not
chart on country radio. The album peaked at number 26
on the country albums chart. So there wasn't a lot
of people buying the record, and there definitely were no
(15:51):
radio stations playing the songs on the record. So you
had this weird split happening in real time. The biggest
award show in music was calling it the best country album,
while country radio and sales to a point were ignoring
the win. And then it got even more interesting when
you looked at how Unchained was made. Because it wasn't
Cash off on an island doing a quiet passion project.
(16:14):
I mean, he was surrounded by serious players. Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers were the backing band. Marty Stewart played
guitar on more than half the tracks. Flea from the
Chili Peppers played on Spiritual. Lindsey Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac
and Fleetwood Mac showed up on Sea of Heartbreak. So
by the time that Johnny Cash won Best Country Album,
it didn't feel like a lifetime achievement pat on the back.
(16:36):
It felt like a very current, very pointed statement. And
that statement was he was still making music that mattered,
even if his main country pipeline didn't know where to
put it exactly. This pivotal moment is why we included
it in the 1998 countdown. Not because the world needed
a reminder that Johnny Cash was great, because everybody knew that.
It was that awkward moment where the industry, well, had
(16:59):
to acknowledge that they weren't a part of something that
was massive. The Grammys were handing him the biggest country
album award, and country radio had nothing to do with it.
And that made him feel weird. And once it happened,
you really couldn't pretend his late 90s chapter was some
side project. It was right there in public. Johnny Cash winning,
everybody applauding, and his work getting a level of recognition
(17:21):
that made everyone take another look. Number six, number six,
number six. Kenny Chesney, two singles, two different kinds of stories.
Kenny Chesney's 1998 on this countdown comes down to two
songs that show two different sides of him and all
in the same calendar year. The first song is That's
Why I'm Here. It's released on March 1st, 1998. As
(17:42):
a single from his album, I Will Stand, it climbs
all the way to number two on Billboard's Hot Country
Songs chart. What's interesting about that record is the subject matter.
It's not a party song, and it's not a standard
romance track either. The writing keeps it grounded, but it
doesn't leave the person stuck in the worst moment. Even
Kenny talked about it that way at the time. He
said it was a favorite of his from the album
(18:03):
because it had a sense of hope baked into it.
That's also why it's a big 1998 Kenny song. it
asks him to deliver something heavier without overdoing it. The
record works because it stays straightforward. He does not try
to make every line into a speech. You know, Kenny
has a way of delivering the song that keeps it calm,
like he's telling you a story. And as a single,
it performs like a major record by ending up as
(18:25):
a top 20 when it came to the year-end songs
of 1998. But then later that year, as much as
that mood was not up, kind of down, the mood
flips and On December 7th, 1998, Kenny releases How Forever Feels.
It's the first single from Everywhere We Go. That album
eventually comes out in 1999, but the single came out
(18:45):
late in 1998, so it does belong on this countdown.
And this one's a different kind of song. It's still reflective,
but it's lighter on its feet. It's about a guy
who's been busy, been moving, been living life. And it
still feels like there's something he hasn't pinned down yet.
Something I think a lot of people can relate to.
The writing is clean and simple and Kenny delivers it perfectly.
He does not oversell it again. He just sits there.
(19:06):
Let's the idea sit there. And it pays off because
How Forever Feels goes on to number one on Billboard's
Hot Country singles and tracks. And it crosses over enough
to be Kenny's first ever top 40 hit on the
Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 27. And if you
need a number that tells you how dominant it was
on country radio, it spent six weeks at number one
on Billboard Country. So the reason I wanted to put
(19:28):
Kenny on a 1998 countdown is because of the versatility
of the two songs and the success that he showed
with those two songs in one year. And it's something
that not many artists can say they've done. You know,
during the late 90s, Kenny was out touring with Alabama,
who he grew up idolizing. This is Kenny talking to
me about Alabama's influence on his career and some touring
(19:49):
advice they gave him.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
My mom loved the group Alabama. And when I was
a kid, they were like the biggest thing going ever.
And to us, they were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
I mean, they really were because they dressed like us
and they sang songs about us and they sing that
we just loved them. All of a sudden we get this,
we see on TV and on the radio that they're
coming to a farm to a field about eight miles
(20:10):
from our house. And it was the biggest thing that
ever happened to me as a child. And I went
to see them and something happened inside my soul. It
was just that set me on this path. Just internally,
I was just stunned about how much they connected with
the audience. And little did I know, you know, at
that night, that later on in my life, when I
(20:32):
first got into the business, that their manager would become
my manager. I mean, he was there that night. And
the older I get, the more I see that we're
all connected. The universe is pushing us in certain ways.
It was just crazy to think that that night I
would become friends with those guys, go out on the
road with them, and their manager would become my manager.
And I benefited a lot from that. And that was
(20:54):
one of the first times as a kid that I
remember going, wow, that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What song would you hear from them?
Speaker 5 (21:03):
There were so many songs. There was Dixieland Delight. There
was Tennessee River, there was Lady Down on Love, there was.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But if you heard it now, it'd remind you of
that experience.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Oh, if I heard it now, it'd remind me of
that experience. And also, I was on the road with
them for like three years. And I remember being in Reno,
Nevada with them, and I was watching their soundcheck. And
I'd been out a couple years, and I hadn't been
home in a while, and I was really tired. And
Teddy Gentry, the bass player of Alabama, comes offstage, and
he goes, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I said, I'm tired.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
He goes, wait, you've been out here 30 years, then
you can be tired. And he was right.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
A 1998 bonus, MTV launches TRL. In 1998, MTV launched TRL,
which stands for Total Request Live. Now, this may sound
like a simple TV programming move from the 90s, but
if you're old enough to remember just how big TRL was,
you know why this is on the countdown. TRL basically
turned pop music into your daily routine of must-see videos
(22:02):
and people, and you would get home from school and
you would watch immediately. Even in college, I watched a lot. Now,
there was no social media. There was no internet like today.
It wasn't like you were just able to watch clips
of people or highlights after something aired. So you went
to TRL. I mean, before TRL, you'd hear songs, maybe
catch a video, maybe read about it later. But what
(22:23):
TRL did was make all that immediate and then put
it in one place, almost like a social media platform
before it even existed. The show didn't invent fan culture,
but it did organize it. It gave people a routine.
Get home, turn it on, vote, argue about where it
was as far as placement of the video, what number
it was, and then celebrate when your song or artist
moved up a spot. It made music feel interactive in
(22:45):
a way that matched where culture was heading. It also
created a new kind of star. Not just artists with hits,
but artists with a presence. Artists didn't just drop a
video and then hope it caught. They had to show up.
They had to be pretty good on camera. And they
had to be able to turn a three-minute song into
a whole personality that fans could rally behind every single day.
If you're trying to point to a things felt different
(23:07):
after this moment of 1998, TRL is a good one
to point to. It's not about a song going number one.
It's that suddenly there's a daily ranking that everybody's watching,
and that becomes the way people decide what's big. Everything
got more visual, more immediate, more competitive, and a lot
more dependent on what fans are willing to rally behind
and push to the top, right there in public, day
after day. Faith Hill releases This Kiss. Faith Hill's 1998
(23:32):
moment wasn't about her showing up on the map. She
was already there with massive hits like It's Your Love,
which was released in 1997. That song turned her and
Tim into the biggest thing in country music at the time.
So when 1998 rolls around, Faith wasn't chasing fame. She
was chasing something that felt bigger and for her own career.
That's what made this kiss such a clean turning point
(23:55):
for her and her career because it didn't sound like
she was leaving country music, but it also didn't sound
like it was built just for country radio. It naturally
organically was bigger than that. This kiss was released February 23rd,
1998 as the first single, from her album that was
called Faith. And it did everything an artist and a
label wanted a single to do. It hit number one
(24:17):
on the country charts in the US and Canada. It
crossed over in a noticeable way that didn't feel forced.
Peeking inside the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.
And what made this special for Faith was the crossover
didn't get in the way of her climb on country radio.
Sometimes when a song goes pop, country looks at it
and goes, ah, we don't like that as much anymore.
The song didn't become a pop hit that country tolerated.
(24:41):
It was a country hit first that also lived in
the pop world, which is hard to do now, but
it was really hard to do back then. And on
May 16th, 1998, This Kiss kicked off a three-week run
at number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. That
detail is very important because it proved it wasn't just
a quick spike or it wasn't just a quick curiosity.
(25:01):
It was country audiences embracing it even months after the release.
And you can hear why. I mean, the song still
stands up, but it was bright. It was catchy. It
gave Faith a way to sound playful and confident all
on her own. That's also why this record worked as
a career signal for her. When you look back at
Faith Hill's timeline, this kiss became one of those memorable
moments where you could point to it and see the
(25:22):
version of her career that was coming next. The bigger stage,
the broader audience, the kind of songs that didn't just
win over country radio, they were heard everywhere. So when
placing the release of this kiss on this countdown, the
point wasn't just Faith Hill had a number one, she
had done that already. The point was that 1998 was
the year she proved she could dominate country and pop,
(25:44):
and it was just the start of her expanding her name.
And now my 1998 non-country edition. In 1998, I actually
started working in radio. I was a teenager. 1998 is
the year I graduated high school. I went and I
begged for a job at our local radio station, 105.9 KLAZ,
(26:07):
and I begged for the job to clean the lobby
on Sundays and switch out the Rick D's weekly top
40 countdown. I got the job. Nothing crazy really wasn't
supposed to be on the air. And my first week
working there before I ever even cleaned a single lobby,
(26:29):
they fired someone for stealing station equipment. Now it was
a small radio station in a small town. It wasn't
like they had a ton of people. to just fill in.
So they needed somebody to jump on the air, do
an overnight shift on the weekend last minute. All my
paperwork was filled out. I was an employee there. So
(26:52):
you're in. That's me. I was that guy. So here
I am, a teenager, always wanted to be in radio,
getting the call up to the bigs. Well, not really
the bigs, but the smalls. But it was still a league.
I was pretty pumped about doing weekend overnights on 105.9 KLAZ,
(27:15):
one of the radio stations I listened to the most
growing up. Growing up, it was like five stations. Kissin'
96 out of Little Rock, which is a country station,
which had Bob Robbins on it. US 97, which was
the Hot Springs country station. 105.9 KLAZ, which was the
station that I was on. It was the pop station.
(27:36):
There was also Magic 105, which was the rock station.
And then there was Cool 95, Good Times and Great Oldies.
That was the station that my stepdad and I listened
to all the time and played trivia about who sang
what song. So the fact that I was getting to
be on one of the radio stations that I listened
(27:56):
to more than most other radio stations my whole life,
that was crazy to me. I didn't have a name.
I was just Bobby. And they said... You can be
Bobby Z or Bobby Bones. Spoiler, I picked Bobby Bones.
At least it sounded like a human. And I go
(28:16):
and I do weekend overnights. And I don't do terrible.
I was terrible, but I could hit all the right
buttons at the right time. And then I do weekend nights.
And from weekend nights, it didn't take long until I
was the guy every single night on 105.9 KLAZ. And
(28:37):
so this is 1998. And I do remember on a
pink disc when I had started my full-time night show
in 1998, this disc had written on it, dot, dot, dot,
(28:58):
hit me, baby, one more time. October of 1998. Britney Spears'
Baby One More Time hits. I looked it up. October 23rd,
MTV played the video for the first time. Nobody knew
that was going to be the biggest pop star in
the next decade or two. And the crazy thing about
(29:21):
this was that Britney Spears wasn't really filling a void.
Meaning music was already huge. Rock was already huge. Hip-hop
was already huge. Country was huge. It was the 90s,
for God's sake. We're doing this podcast on that. There
wasn't a dominant... teenage pop star, though.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
And that's.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
What happened suddenly there's a 16 year old she's from
Louisiana she was in a school girl you know it's
weird to say it now because I'm an adult man
but then I was only 18 so it was okay
okay school girl uniform kind of hard for me to
say because it felt kind of creepy but then it
wasn't creepy The song itself almost didn't happen. According to Lore,
(30:02):
several artists passed on it before it got to Britney.
And even the title confused people because it was dot, dot, dot,
maybe one more time, but the hit me was in parentheses.
And it's not really how people said stuff, but man,
it worked and everybody wanted to hear it. And this
(30:24):
is when we had legitimate request lines. where you would
answer the phones and see what people wanted to hear.
You'd mark it down on a chart, and then it's
not that you would play it right then, but then
you would go and you would show your boss, hey,
we got this many requests for this song, and then
it did factor into what was being played. And that
song was massive, obviously. And then, sometimes I run, sometimes
(30:48):
I fall, I cry, whatever it is. And one after
the other, boom. Britney had launched the new pop movement,
And then it was everything else that followed that was
part of what was bright and fun and polished and
catchy and kids loved it. And so Britney explodes and
the Backstreet Boys explode and NSYNC explodes and Christina Aguilera explodes.
(31:16):
Teen pop then becomes the dominant force in music. So
that's 1998. Again, you might think that's 2000s. And yes,
the 2000s That's when all that music became monster music.
But it started in 1998. And it started at my
first ever radio job. A guy that was almost named
(31:40):
Bobby Z was playing Britney Spears. I think Britney Spears
is one of the last music stars that became universally
famous without YouTube or Spotify or TikTok or streaming. I mean,
it was MTV. She was really one of the last artists, major,
major artists They got big just because of MTV, just
(32:02):
because of, it was really just radio and MTV, but
everybody knew who Britney Spears was. I don't think that
fame really happens again. So that's my discussion of 1998
Britney Spears. And not that it was a, big fan
favorite to me, but it was a big part of
my career because right when I started, that started. Now,
(32:24):
1998 was also a year of one of my top
five favorite movies of all time, which is The Truman Show.
And the story kind of gets a little more interesting
every single year. In 1998, The Truman Show, it hit
theaters and it was kind of seen as a clever,
what do you call it, a comedy drama. Is that
a thing? With Jim Carrey. Today it almost feels Black Mirror-ish,
(32:47):
if you watch Black Mirror, because a lot of those
shows they put out early are starting to kind of happen,
and you're like, man, that's crazy. But that's kind of
what this feels like, science fiction that was meant to
be absurd, but it sort of came true. If you
don't know and you haven't seen the movie, the premise
of the Truman Show is Truman Burbank. He doesn't know it,
but his entire life is a television show. Every moment
(33:09):
is being filmed. Everyone around him is an actor. Millions
of people watch him constantly. Again, in 1998, that seemed
absurd as far as real life. Like, who would voluntarily
let strangers watch their entire life? Sigh. Then came reality TV, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, influencers,
(33:30):
live streaming, live streaming, right? That's what that was, even
if he didn't know it, full live streaming. So millions
of people now essentially do Truman's life voluntarily. What's really
wild about all this when I was looking it up,
because again, this is one of my favorite movies ever,
is that this came out one year before Big Brother,
(33:52):
two years before Survivor. The reality television explosion hadn't happened yet,
but the Truman Show had. And it was made to
be fiction and crazy and wow, this will never happen,
but what if? And then what if kind of happened? 1998,
crazy year. I pulled up the chart for the biggest
songs in 1998. The Goo Goo Dolls, Iris. Jam, also
(34:18):
from a movie. Bare Naked Ladies, one week. I loved
that song mostly because it was one of those songs
that I felt like if I knew every single word
of the song, at some point in my life, it
would come on and I could sing along with it
and someone would be impressed. That's what I thought. Chickadee China,
the Chinese chicken. You have a drumstick and your brain
stops ticking. Watch your next Files with no lights on.
Your Dalai Mason. Smokey Mountain, this one. Like that thing, right?
(34:41):
Brandy and Monica, The Boy is Mine. Aerosmith, I Don't
Want to Miss a Thing from the movie. Armageddon, which
was also awesome. Semisonic, Closing Time. Third Eye Blind was rocking.
They had Jumper. Fastball, The Way. Obviously, Britney Spears, Baby
One More Time. Jay-Z, Hard Knock Life. Beastie Boys come
(35:01):
back with a second version of themselves with Intergalactic. You
know what? 1998 rocked. I'll say it. 1998 frickin' rocked. Well,
it did for me anyway. It's when I started one
small step For me, one giant step for my career.
(35:23):
And that is my 1998 non-country edition. Boom. Steve Warner
releases Holes in the Floor of Heaven. When you look
back on country music in the late 90s, Steve Warner
is one of those names that can sneak up on you.
He'd been around for a while, but by the time
(35:45):
1998 hit, He was the guy putting in all the
hard work for years. He had also done it in
a bunch of different lanes. What made this year stand
out for Steve wasn't some reinvention. It was Nashville putting
a spotlight on him and his music that felt long overdue.
His song, Holes in the Floor of Heaven, came out
in 1998. It was the lead single of his 13th
studio album, Burning the Roadhouse Down. The song was written
(36:08):
by Steve Warner and Billy Kirsch. It climbs all the
way to number two on the country charts in the U.S.
and Canada. Now, peaking at number two alone, would be
a great year for most artists, especially when you think
about how crowded it was in the late 90s because
of names like Shania and Garth and McGraw. But the
reason it lands as a big moment in 1998 on
this countdown is the awards that the song racked up.
(36:31):
Holes in the Floor of Heaven won Song of the
Year from the CMAs in 1998 and the ACMs in
1999 because it was so successful that it also crashed
into 1999. This award differs from other country music awards
because Song of the Year is pretty much the genre
saying this one had it all. It had the writing
and the structure, the emotional punch, and it just stuck
(36:53):
with people. This award was about the song itself, not
the hype around the artist or a big name or
a record label spending a bunch of money to get
it pushed up, which is why Warner fit perfectly. Steve
Warner wasn't the guy who needed a big personality to
carry a record. He had always been your favorite musician's musician,
the one who could play circles around a lot of people.
(37:15):
And this song hit because it resonated with the listener
and it allowed the audience to fill in the gaps
with their own life experiences. Now, from a career perspective,
this wasn't some comeback for Steve either. I mean, it
was a 13th studio album. It was more like a
checkpoint year where the industry noticed the quality of work
that Warner had been producing for a long time. And
(37:36):
he had the song now, They got the eyeballs on
him and the rest of the work that he had
been doing forever. You know, when you're an established artist,
you're not chasing that first break anymore. You're chasing songs
that can hold up for years to come. Songs that
can sit next to your best stuff without feeling like
a rerun. And that's what Holes in the Floor of
Heaven was for Steve Warner. It gave him one of
(37:57):
those late decade signature moments where everybody from fans to
award voters landed in the same place. This belongs on
this countdown because it's a reminder that that the biggest
moments aren't always attached to the biggest names in country music.
Sometimes it's one song, built the right way, widely accepted
by the audience buying the album, and then also accepted
(38:19):
by the critics within the industry. Hang tight. The Bobbycast
will be right back. Number three. Vince Gill gets his
first number one country album. You know, when you look
back at the late 90s and all the late 90s country,
Vince Gill is one of those names where the respect
(38:41):
comes as soon as someone brings him up. By 1998,
Vince Gill was not a new face in the genre
looking to break through. Vince had already been through the
grind of an artist by the late 90s. He spent
years proving he can write, he can sing, he can play,
and he can deliver records that don't fall apart after
a week of airplay. By the time 1998 rolled around,
(39:02):
Vince had the single success, the awards, the reputation, and
he was one of the cleanest singers in really any format,
really one of the best. He was also a rare
type of artist that when you talked about him in
the country music genre, he was treated like a technician
and a storyteller at the same time, which was very rare.
I mean, the voice that he has is obvious, but
(39:23):
the bigger thing with Vince is dependability. When Vince put
something out, it was always done in a way that
felt right and didn't feel forced and mostly felt like
true Vince Gill. So the reason that his album, The Key,
matters in 1998, it's not that it changes his story
as an artist, it's that it rewards the story he
had already built. Because singles and albums measure different things,
(39:44):
a number one single can really be about timing or
radio momentum or just The hook, the chorus of a
song being so impossible to ignore. An album going number one,
especially for an artist who's already established, signals something that
feels a little deeper than a song. The audience is
showing up for the artist, not just a track that
happens to be the most popular song this week or
(40:06):
this month. That's why August 11th, 1998 is a clean
marker on his timeline. That's the release date for The Key.
And it went number one on Billboard Top Country Albums
A first for Vince. The album had songs like, If
You Ever Have Forever In Mind, Kindly Keepin' It Country,
and Don't Come Cryin' To Me. What's funny is how
(40:27):
unsurprising it sounds when you say it out loud, because
by 1998, Vince Gill had already felt like a number
one album guy. So when it finally happens, it doesn't
land like a sudden breakthrough. It lands like the chart
is finally catching up to the level that he had
been working at for years. That's why this build-up moment
doesn't feel like a leap. It feels like he was
(40:48):
already there. And the key helps that case because it
doesn't come off like he's chasing whatever the late 90s
version of current is. There's no big shiny pivot. There's
no new Vince that they're marketing. It's the same core
strengths that Vince had built his entire career around. Sharp songwriting,
clean melodies, and that kind of vocal performance that is
(41:09):
all about control. So in a 1998 countdown, this belongs
in the career lane category. more than the splashy headline lane.
Vince doesn't need a plot twist to matter or to
be new. The story of Vince in 1998 is growth.
Years of dependable, excellent, and being unmistakably himself. And then
(41:30):
finally getting that specific album milestone that somehow hadn't clicked
into place yet. In 1998, he wasn't trying to be
somebody else. He just made a Vince Gill record. Steady, sharp, confident, good.
And this time, the album numbers matched the reputation. I've
been lucky enough to sit down with Vince Gill a
few times over the years. And so I played a
(41:51):
game with him when he was in studio one time.
We played Did Vince Say It? Did you say it?
Number one. I do not like being famous. I like
being normal.
Speaker 6 (42:01):
Yeah, I said that.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
That is correct. One point for Vince Gill. Thank you.
All right. Did Vince Gill say it? Bobby Bones is
one of the best things to happen to country music
in the last 30 years. I might have felt it,
but I don't know if I've said it out loud.
That is correct. You did not say it. I made
that up. All right. Good, good, good. All right. Did
Vince Gill say it? If you ain't first, you're last.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
No.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Ricky Bobby said that. That's correct. Vince Gill did not
say that. How about this one? Did you say it?
Success is always temporary. When all is said and done,
the only thing you'll have left is your character. You're
asking me? I'm asking you. Did you say it? I
said that, yes. Yes, you did say it. That is correct.
Speaker 5 (42:41):
One more.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Let's do one more. So far, you've nailed it here.
Did Vince Gill say it? Guitars are like women. You'll
never get them totally right.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
What?
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Okay. Amy, you can guess first because Vince looks like
he's puzzled if he may have thought this and not
said it. Guitars are like women. You'll never get them
totally right. Did Vince Gill say it?
Speaker 5 (43:00):
Amy? Yes.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Okay. Vince, did you say it? I might have to
plead the fifth on this one. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (43:05):
Might catch some crap for this one.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Well, Slash said it.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
You did not. So no, he did not say it.
But you're 100%. Vince Gill is 100% on did Vince
Gill say it. An unforgettable moment of 1998, the Monica
Lewinsky-Bill Clinton scandal. In 1998, Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton, they had
a scandal that goes from a White House story to
something the whole country is following day after day. This
was massive news. And the thing people may forget about
(43:29):
now is how hard it was to avoid. It wasn't
tucked into the politics section of the daily news. It
was everywhere. TV, radio, magazine covers at the grocery store.
Because there was always a new development, a new report,
a new quote, a new legal move. It turned into
this rolling daily narrative that people tracked like a television series.
The basic timeline moves fast. The allegations broke early in
(43:50):
the year. and quickly tied into the Starr investigation. Bill
Clinton went on television and denied it. Then by August,
he gave a statement acknowledging an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
After that, it was legal hearings and testimony and nonstop analysis.
And it just happened over and over and over again.
It reshaped the way politics were talked about in the mainstream. Suddenly,
(44:13):
the conversation wasn't just policy and elections. It was credibility.
It was personal conduct. It was media strategy. and whether
the rules are the same for powerful people and maybe
different for, well, everyone else. And whether you cared about
politics or not, almost everyone had an opinion on the story,
the people in the story, what the consequences should be.
Once 1998 set that pattern, wall-to-wall coverage, constant analysis, everything's
(44:39):
a cliffhanger. I mean, that style of political attention started
then and still hasn't gone away.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Number two. Jodi Messina breaks through with her first number one.
When you look back in 1998, that's the year Jodi
Messina goes from, oh yeah, I know that name, to
somebody that you hear every time you turned on country radio.
Because she's not brand new when she releases Bye Bye.
What a great song, by the way. She had already
been in the mix. People in Nashville knew the name.
(45:11):
Radio had heard the voice. She'd had songs that did
enough to keep her in the mix, in the conversations,
within the industry. But as you may know, there's a
difference in in the conversation or leading the conversation. In 1998,
she led the conversation. That's where the song Bye Bye
comes in. It comes out January 12th, 1998 as the
(45:35):
lead single from her album I'm Alright. And it becomes
her first number one on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.
That song is number one for two weeks, which is
a run. Especially in a format that was super crowded
in the late 90s. But the bigger tell is that
it doesn't just peak and get replaced. It hangs around
long enough to finish as one of the biggest country
songs of the entire year of Billboard's year-end list. And
(45:59):
that's the difference. Hitting number one, it's a big moment.
But showing up on the year-end list means it just
didn't have a moment. It just didn't have a hot stretch.
It did its thing, and then it stayed in rotation
for months. It's one of those songs that just kept
being played. It kept turning up all year. which is
a big deal in country music, again, in the late
90s when everybody was releasing bangers. The other reason it
(46:20):
works as a countdown moment here with us is the
attitude of the record. Bye Bye is not a shy
song about what she is saying. It's not trying to
sound sweet. It's not trying to fit neatly into whatever
else is on the radio. It's direct. It's confident. It's
got some edge to it, which is why it's so
easy to recognize right away. And when you've got that
kind of identifiable song, the career stuff starts shifting. The
(46:42):
follow-up single doesn't have to introduce you to the world again.
The bookings get easier. The momentum, it's not shaky because
now there's proof that your sound can carry. So in
a 1998 countdown, it's not just Jody's first number one.
It's the year Jody goes from a name you recognize
and maybe you've talked about to a name that now
(47:03):
exists and demands respect and you want to hear the song.
And that's what sets up the run that's still going
almost 30 years later. I talked to Jodi about this
song once and asked her what this song was about
when she released it. This is what she said. I
think at that point I sang about the strength I
wish I could have had. You know, I wish I
was that gutsy or I wish I was, you know,
bye bye love meanwhile, you know, and dating some guy
(47:25):
that treats you like garbage.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
The facade has ruined you all.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Number one, one, one.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
One, one, one, one.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
That's not an effect. That's my voice. Number one. The
Chicks release Wide Open Spaces. When you talk about the
clearest overnight career change of 1998, the Chicks, then the
Dixie Chicks, owned it with the release of Wide Open Spaces.
The album dropped January 27th, 1998. And on paper, it
looked like just a major label debut. But it was
(48:00):
also the very first record with Natalie Maines as the
lead vocalist. And you can hear why that matters almost immediately.
The harmonies felt tighter. There was personality. There was a
confidence in the delivery of the songs that made the
group sound less like a promising act and more like
a finished product. Like they already knew who they were
and they already knew the room they were walking into.
(48:21):
And the reason this belongs at the top of the
1998 countdown is because it wasn't just a one song wonder.
You don't look back and go, man, they had one
big hit on that album. Nope, not at all. That
album worked as an entire package. Multiple singles connect. The
project stays in heavy rotation. The success builds instead of
cooling off after the first or even second hit. Wide
(48:44):
Open Spaces sold more than 13 million copies in the U.S. alone.
It was the fourth best-selling country album of all time
after Shania Twain's Come On Over and Garth Brooks' No
Fences and Rope in the Wind albums. You can see
that in the charts how big it was. Wide open
spaces hit number one on Billboard's top country albums chart
and went all the way to number four on the
(49:04):
Billboard 200. And that's every genre. But let's focus on
that second number for a second. That's a sign of
the album reaching a much wider audience than just country
music fans. It means that people who aren't following country
radio week to week are still buying the album, still
talking about it, still hearing those songs. Then the awards
for the album start landing. The Chicks won two CMA
(49:24):
Awards in 1998, including Best Vocal Group of the Year
and the Horizon Award, now known as the Best New
Artist of the Year Award. And in 1999, Wide Open
Spaces won Album of the Year and New Duo or
Group of the Year at the ACMs and two Grammy Awards.
including Best Country Album and Best Country Performance. They were
winning everything. That's not a normal major label debut by
(49:45):
any standards. Most artists would take one of those lines
and call it a career. But the chicks did it
all at once. Chart dominance, crossover, major awards. So when
you place Wide Open Spaces into a 1998 countdown, the
point is straightforward. This is the launch of a major
label era with the first big proof that the ceiling
(50:05):
for a group like this was way higher than what
people assumed. Its intermediate scale, its staying power, and the
awards it was hauling tells you that it was just massive.
And it was good. It wasn't just hype. And for that,
the release of Wide Open Spaces from the Chicks lands
them at number one on the top ten moments in
country music from the year 1998. That'll do it for
(50:29):
our top ten moments in country music from the year 1998.
From breakout albums to Hall of Fame inductions and even
some political scandals, the year had it all. If there's
something you remember from the year that you would like
to hear on the countdown, just put a little comment
up there on social media or Spotify, wherever you get
your podcasts. And thanks for listening, and we'll talk to
you on the next episode, which is 1999. All right, bye, everybody.
(50:51):
Love this episode of The Bobbycast? Subscribe on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Welcome back to the 90s Country Podcast. This episode is
all about 1998. A year where a handful of artists
started feeling established and a couple records ended up defining
the year by pure staying power. We're counting down the
top 10 country music moments. We'll go 10 to 1,
so let's get into it. Number 10. It's a big
year for Terry Clark, Leanne Womack, and Mark Wills. If
(00:35):
you look at 1998 beyond the big headliners, there were
a few names quietly taking that next step in their career,
but not in some loud, flashy way. in a way
that changes how artists start to feel about their own
career finally paying off. And we'll talk about Terry Clark,
Leanne Womack, Mark Wills, because 1998 is one of those
years for them. Terry Clark's road to 1998, not a
(00:57):
straight shot. She came to Nashville from Canada at a
young age. And she did the grind thing first. Playing, writing,
learning the town, learning what kinds of songs fit her,
and figuring out how to stand out without turning into
something that felt fabricated. By the mid-90s, she's already on
the radio, she's beginning to build a good run for herself,
but she's living in that frustrating zone a lot of
(01:18):
artists get into in their career. It's a zone where
success is close, but you're just not quite there, and
you're definitely not quite at the top yet. She's putting
out singles that do pretty well, she's earning fans, and
she's proving that she can hang. But that defining number
one song moment still hasn't happened. Then 1998 arrives. And
that's the year all that hard work finally pays off
(01:40):
when she lands her first number one with your easy
on the eyes. And when you think about how far
she had to come, this was a memorable moment for Terry.
I mean, she moved countries. She spent years chasing the dream.
She had songs that were close, but weren't quite there.
She had done the travel, the early mornings, the constant
proving that she belonged. But by getting that first number
(02:01):
one in 1998, it was a moment where she could
finally exhale and say, okay, it's finally working. That she
wasn't just trying to make it. She was actually doing it.
That's why Terry's 1998 belongs in this conversation. It's not
a trend. It's not a lucky break. It's not about
the first major moment. It's about an artist that's been
grinding for a long time that finally has it happen.
(02:21):
I talked to Terry about her origin story moving from
Canada to Nashville. And this is what she said.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I had gone to live with my grandparents in Ontario
for about six months before I moved to Nashville. Long
story there. But I ended up, my mom flew from Alberta.
to Ontario and her and one of her very best
friends who'd known me since I was a little baby,
we all decided it was just time for me to
go to Nashville. I had been waiting on a legal
way to move here. I didn't have a green card.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
I know a lot of people that didn't wait for
that part of it. They just, they did it the
non-super legal way.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Well, I did it the non-super legal way. And we
just said, you know what?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I was 18 years old and I was getting depressed
because this was my destiny and I had to be here.
And so moved to in a Honda Civic with a
guitar in the backseat and everything I owned. And man,
the days of life being so simple that everything you
own can fit in the backseat of a car. We
crossed the border and the border agent's looking in the backseat.
He sees these two women with this teenager in the
back and he's like, where are you ladies headed?
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Who was with you?
Speaker 3 (03:19):
My mom, Linda, and her friend, Pat.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Pat was driving. Pat's a solid friend then.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
She's solid until we found out she had pot in
the car after we got across the border.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
But that's a whole other story. You know what? Oh
my gosh. Could have derailed the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I don't think I've told anybody that yet, but I
don't think Pat would care.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It's legal in Canada now.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Anyway, so we crossed the border and the border agents
look in the backseat at the guitar and we're thinking
we're going to be in trouble because we know we
have no intention of actually bringing me back to Canada.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
We're just leaving me there.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
You don't say that, right?
Speaker 5 (03:54):
No, no.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
We're going shopping. totally shopping just for.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
With your guitar totally just to play songs while you
buy turtlenecks.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Going well he said where are you going and so
Pat's like.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The Grand Ole Opry we're gonna go see the Grand
Ole Opry so they they thought these three broads are
on the way to Nashville to do with a Nashville
touristy thing the guitar and he didn't know that there
were only two coming back.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
For Leanne Womack 1998 is big because it's the year
that she proves her first chapter was not a one-time
thing She comes to Nashville, similar to Terry, doing the
behind-the-scenes work first, learning the town, learning the songs, fine-tuning
her sound and style. Then her debut song, Never Again Again,
really gained some momentum with fans and people in the industry.
(04:36):
But now she's got the challenge of trying to follow
that up. That's what 1998 gives her. Early in the year,
her debut album hits a real milestone when it's gold,
which means it's sold over 500,000 copies. This is important
because it says people didn't just want to hear one single,
that they stayed long enough to buy the record. In 1998,
(04:57):
she releases her second album, Some Things I Know. That's
the moment where the career shifts from introduction to continuity.
It's her showing she can deliver again with the same
core identity without needing a new storyline every six months.
In other words, 1998 wasn't her arrival. It's more of
her confirmation. It's the year she stops feeling like a
(05:18):
strong debut and starts feeling like someone who's going to
have a real run, which she does. Mark Wills moved
to Nashville from Blue Ridge, Georgia in the early 1990s
and went right into the demo singer grind, singing demos constantly,
then got discovered, then signed with Mercury Records. And while
he did put out a debut album in 1996 that
(05:38):
proved he could land singles, 1998 was the year that
it all started stacking up. On May 5th, 1998, He
releases Wish You Were Here, and it turns into an
album that gave him a real footprint in country music.
The album put out four top 10 country singles. It
climbed to the top 10 on the country albums chart.
It even sold over 1 million copies and hit platinum,
(06:02):
which solidified how good the album was. 1998 was all
about building momentum for Mark, and it set him up
for what came later in 1999, his first number one
and an ACM win. So that's why we start with Terry, Leanne,
and Mark. That's why they're at 10 on the 1998 countdown.
Because while the biggest names dominated the headlines, Terry, Leanne,
(06:24):
and Mark were artists quietly putting together the kind of
year that would put together a great career.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
Number nine.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Garth Brooks releases his Double Live album. If you're ranking 1998,
it's hard to leave Double Live out because very few
artists in any genre have ever put out monster numbers
like this on a live album. By this point in
the decade, Garth isn't trying to convince anyone of anything.
He's already been the defining country star of the 90s.
(06:52):
He's already proven he can sell albums at a level
that doesn't really compare to anybody. But what's interesting about
Double Live is it's not a new direction record. It's
more like a snapshot. This is what the Garth era
feels like when you capture it from the stage. The
album comes out November 17th, 1998. It's a two-disc live
record from performances through the 96 to 98 world tour.
(07:16):
And the reason it matters is because this wasn't just
one night from one of his favorite shows. It's years
of touring that showed just how consistent his shows were.
And then you get to the part that makes it
worthy of putting it on this countdown. Just sales. Double
Live sells over a million copies in its first week. Yeah,
first week. At the time, that was the highest first
(07:37):
week sales in SoundScan history. And that's a wild stat
for any album, much less a live album. Especially a
double album. Because mostly live albums and live records and
live songs are usually treated as a bonus. It's bonus material.
And this one is anything but bonus based on the numbers.
It's basically a major release. But not everybody can do that,
(07:59):
regardless of genre. But Garth Brooks did. By late 1998,
the Garth audience isn't just buying singles they like. They're
buying the full experience. Because that's what Garth was trying
to provide. They're buying the album. They're going to the tour.
They're buying everything around it. A live album becomes the
cleanest way to bottle that up. It's also a smart
move because it lets him re-center the story on performance,
(08:22):
which is really what his superstardom was based in. You
also have to remember the timing. This comes out as
the decade is nearing the finish line. And it lands
like the cherry on top of Garth Brooks in the 90s.
It's really just saying, here's the catalog. Also, here's the energy,
and mostly, here's what the era really was. And for fans,
(08:43):
it's a way to take the show home, for lack
of a better term, or take it to their car,
especially for people who couldn't see the tour, couldn't go
to the concert, or wanted to feel something closer to
it than just a studio track. Garth's own site now
calls it the best-selling live record in music history and
notes the album's massive certification and talks about that first
week number. And you don't have to hang the whole
(09:05):
story on that claim, But it does underline the point.
This wasn't a minor release. It wasn't an extra release,
which a lot of live albums are. It was legitimately
a major moment. So if you're talking about 1998 and
you're counting things down, Double Live belongs because it captures
Garth at full power. Not a concept. Not a hype.
(09:26):
It really measures it and you get to hear it live.
A live album that sells like that is basically in
its own category. It's one of the clearest Garth moments
of the entire decade. I once asked Garth about his
trick to connect with audiences so well during his live shows.
And this is what he said.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
I don't know if there's a trick. I just remember
that's what I grew up on. That's a crazy thing, man.
Anybody that's an artist grew up on two things. They
grew up on going to concerts and they grew up
on listening to the radio. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And then I asked Garth when he realized he could
really sing.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
I grew up in a house where my mom, I'm
going to put my mom in the top five female
vocals of all time. Not because she's my mom, because
she was fabulous.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Really? She was good, huh?
Speaker 5 (10:06):
She was amazing.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
She had a deal on Capitol. Gave it up to
raise six kids.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Very sweet.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
Our sister, talented, could play the hell out of any guitar.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Your mom had a deal?
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
A record deal.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
Yeah, she was great. We were just out in L.A.
in Capitol Studio. I think we were in Studio A.
She recorded in Studio B over there right next door,
and they had a session, so I couldn't go in there.
But so wanted to sneak in there and see where
she stood and where she recorded.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Number eight. Tammy Wynette's Hall of Fame honor and final goodbye. Okay,
so for the next spot on the 1998 countdown, it's
not about a song or an album release. It's about timing.
Because 1998 was the year that country music did two
things with Tammy Wynette at the same time. It inducted
her into the Country Music Hall of Fame and it
also sadly lost her. That combination was what made it
(10:57):
land so heavy. Hall of Fame moments were supposed to
feel like a victory lap. You know, the genre saying, hey,
this is permanent. You are part of the foundation. With Tammy,
it ended up feeling like the industry was honoring her
entire story and then immediately turning around and talking about
her in the past tense. So when people look back
at how she got there, it's one of the most
classic Nashville stories, a real Nashville climb. The only difference
(11:19):
was she didn't blend in ever. I mean, she had
a voice to cut through. She came to Nashville in
the mid 60s. And once she teamed up with producer
Billy Sherrill, her run began pretty quickly. It wasn't hype.
It was recognition because, again, her voice was so strong,
but she also sounded like somebody you already knew. 1968 happened.
That's when Stand By Your Man happened. And that turned
(11:41):
into a record that stamped her name onto the genre permanently.
People still sing it all the time, even at the
Opry today. It wasn't just a hit. It became her
signature song. The kind of song that people argued about
or quoted or used as a reference point for an
entire era. What separated Tammy is how real her songs
felt and what she sang about. I mean, that's why
people connected to her so deeply. It felt like her
(12:02):
music was speaking to you. It felt like she was
singing about something you knew about or lived. It was
something that people could relate to. And her songs, the hits,
they stacked up. My Elusive Dreams with David Houston went
number one. Not long after that, I Don't Want to
Play House hit number one as well. And that song
came with major industry recognition for the first time, including
a Grammy that pretty much said what everybody already knew.
(12:25):
She wasn't just popular. She was critically loved as well.
And she was becoming a defining voice in country music.
Then there was the duet chapter. And that became a
huge part of why her catalog stayed alive for so long.
The run with George Jones wasn't a side project. It
was a major lane of her career. Songs like Golden Ring,
The Jet Set, Two Story House, that one was massive.
(12:48):
Those records didn't feel like collaborations. They felt like real life.
And that's what it was because George and Tammy were
married during the string of hits they had together. And
by the time 1998 rolled around, Tammy's career had already
been a staple in the country music genre. She had
number one, she had awards, she had sales. She had
the reputation. She had major influence on up-and-coming artists, especially
(13:09):
female artists. So when the Hall of Fame induction happened
in 1998, it wasn't the genre saying, great career. It
was the genre admitting, officially, that a huge piece of
country music's identity had been shaped by her voice and
the way that she told stories, especially when it came
from a woman's perspective. Sadly, when she passed away that
same year, the Hall of Fame moment stopped just being
(13:30):
an honor and started feeling like the closing chapter for Tammy.
That's why this belongs in the 1998 countdown. It was
a culmination of Tammy Wynette's legacy, the climb, the peak,
the songs that outlived their release dates, the voice that
stayed a staple in the genre, and then finally, in 1998,
her goodbye. Hang tight. The Bobbycast will be right back.
(14:02):
Number 7 Johnny Cash's Grammy win causes controversy. There were
some moments in 1998 that happened on a stage, and
there were some that happened behind the scenes. Johnny Cash
was part of that second kind. Because on February 25th, 1998,
Johnny Cash went to the Grammys and walked out with
a reminder that his late 1990s chapter wasn't just nostalgia,
(14:26):
it was still competing, still winning, still a major part
of the genre. The 40th annual Grammy Awards were at
Radio City Music Hall in New York. And that night
he walked away with three awards total. Two of them
being Grammy Hall of Fame Awards for I Walked a
Line and Ring of Fire. And, you know, those two
made sense. Those were forever songs. That's what the Grammys
were saying. Like, these recordings help shape the genre and
(14:48):
they still hold up. But it was the third one
that made this a real 1998 moment. Best country album
for American 2 Unchained. The win mattered because this album
wasn't built like a standard late 90s Nashville project. Maybe
you've heard of this. It was his second album with
Rick Rubin on the American Recordings label, and it leaned
(15:09):
into covers and revisited older material, but it was done different.
It was stripped down. It was direct. It definitely wasn't
chasing what country radio was doing. And that's where the
tension came in, because the album got critical respect and
a lot of it. I mean, Rick Rubin was involved,
one of the greatest producers of, well, all time. I mean,
the guy had so many number ones with so many artists,
(15:30):
including the Beastie Boys. I mean, Jay-Z, now Johnny Cash.
But again, it was ignored by country radio. His single,
which was a cover of Soundgarden's Rusty Cage, did not
chart on country radio. The album peaked at number 26
on the country albums chart. So there wasn't a lot
of people buying the record, and there definitely were no
(15:51):
radio stations playing the songs on the record. So you
had this weird split happening in real time. The biggest
award show in music was calling it the best country album,
while country radio and sales to a point were ignoring
the win. And then it got even more interesting when
you looked at how Unchained was made. Because it wasn't
Cash off on an island doing a quiet passion project.
(16:14):
I mean, he was surrounded by serious players. Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers were the backing band. Marty Stewart played
guitar on more than half the tracks. Flea from the
Chili Peppers played on Spiritual. Lindsey Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac
and Fleetwood Mac showed up on Sea of Heartbreak. So
by the time that Johnny Cash won Best Country Album,
it didn't feel like a lifetime achievement pat on the back.
(16:36):
It felt like a very current, very pointed statement. And
that statement was he was still making music that mattered,
even if his main country pipeline didn't know where to
put it exactly. This pivotal moment is why we included
it in the 1998 countdown. Not because the world needed
a reminder that Johnny Cash was great, because everybody knew that.
It was that awkward moment where the industry, well, had
(16:59):
to acknowledge that they weren't a part of something that
was massive. The Grammys were handing him the biggest country
album award, and country radio had nothing to do with it.
And that made him feel weird. And once it happened,
you really couldn't pretend his late 90s chapter was some
side project. It was right there in public. Johnny Cash winning,
everybody applauding, and his work getting a level of recognition
(17:21):
that made everyone take another look. Number six, number six,
number six. Kenny Chesney, two singles, two different kinds of stories.
Kenny Chesney's 1998 on this countdown comes down to two
songs that show two different sides of him and all
in the same calendar year. The first song is That's
Why I'm Here. It's released on March 1st, 1998. As
(17:42):
a single from his album, I Will Stand, it climbs
all the way to number two on Billboard's Hot Country
Songs chart. What's interesting about that record is the subject matter.
It's not a party song, and it's not a standard
romance track either. The writing keeps it grounded, but it
doesn't leave the person stuck in the worst moment. Even
Kenny talked about it that way at the time. He
said it was a favorite of his from the album
(18:03):
because it had a sense of hope baked into it.
That's also why it's a big 1998 Kenny song. it
asks him to deliver something heavier without overdoing it. The
record works because it stays straightforward. He does not try
to make every line into a speech. You know, Kenny
has a way of delivering the song that keeps it calm,
like he's telling you a story. And as a single,
it performs like a major record by ending up as
(18:25):
a top 20 when it came to the year-end songs
of 1998. But then later that year, as much as
that mood was not up, kind of down, the mood
flips and On December 7th, 1998, Kenny releases How Forever Feels.
It's the first single from Everywhere We Go. That album
eventually comes out in 1999, but the single came out
(18:45):
late in 1998, so it does belong on this countdown.
And this one's a different kind of song. It's still reflective,
but it's lighter on its feet. It's about a guy
who's been busy, been moving, been living life. And it
still feels like there's something he hasn't pinned down yet.
Something I think a lot of people can relate to.
The writing is clean and simple and Kenny delivers it perfectly.
He does not oversell it again. He just sits there.
(19:06):
Let's the idea sit there. And it pays off because
How Forever Feels goes on to number one on Billboard's
Hot Country singles and tracks. And it crosses over enough
to be Kenny's first ever top 40 hit on the
Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 27. And if you
need a number that tells you how dominant it was
on country radio, it spent six weeks at number one
on Billboard Country. So the reason I wanted to put
(19:28):
Kenny on a 1998 countdown is because of the versatility
of the two songs and the success that he showed
with those two songs in one year. And it's something
that not many artists can say they've done. You know,
during the late 90s, Kenny was out touring with Alabama,
who he grew up idolizing. This is Kenny talking to
me about Alabama's influence on his career and some touring
(19:49):
advice they gave him.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
My mom loved the group Alabama. And when I was
a kid, they were like the biggest thing going ever.
And to us, they were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
I mean, they really were because they dressed like us
and they sang songs about us and they sing that
we just loved them. All of a sudden we get this,
we see on TV and on the radio that they're
coming to a farm to a field about eight miles
(20:10):
from our house. And it was the biggest thing that
ever happened to me as a child. And I went
to see them and something happened inside my soul. It
was just that set me on this path. Just internally,
I was just stunned about how much they connected with
the audience. And little did I know, you know, at
that night, that later on in my life, when I
(20:32):
first got into the business, that their manager would become
my manager. I mean, he was there that night. And
the older I get, the more I see that we're
all connected. The universe is pushing us in certain ways.
It was just crazy to think that that night I
would become friends with those guys, go out on the
road with them, and their manager would become my manager.
And I benefited a lot from that. And that was
(20:54):
one of the first times as a kid that I
remember going, wow, that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What song would you hear from them?
Speaker 5 (21:03):
There were so many songs. There was Dixieland Delight. There
was Tennessee River, there was Lady Down on Love, there was.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
But if you heard it now, it'd remind you of
that experience.
Speaker 5 (21:13):
Oh, if I heard it now, it'd remind me of
that experience. And also, I was on the road with
them for like three years. And I remember being in Reno,
Nevada with them, and I was watching their soundcheck. And
I'd been out a couple years, and I hadn't been
home in a while, and I was really tired. And
Teddy Gentry, the bass player of Alabama, comes offstage, and
he goes, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I said, I'm tired.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
He goes, wait, you've been out here 30 years, then
you can be tired. And he was right.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
A 1998 bonus, MTV launches TRL. In 1998, MTV launched TRL,
which stands for Total Request Live. Now, this may sound
like a simple TV programming move from the 90s, but
if you're old enough to remember just how big TRL was,
you know why this is on the countdown. TRL basically
turned pop music into your daily routine of must-see videos
(22:02):
and people, and you would get home from school and
you would watch immediately. Even in college, I watched a lot. Now,
there was no social media. There was no internet like today.
It wasn't like you were just able to watch clips
of people or highlights after something aired. So you went
to TRL. I mean, before TRL, you'd hear songs, maybe
catch a video, maybe read about it later. But what
(22:23):
TRL did was make all that immediate and then put
it in one place, almost like a social media platform
before it even existed. The show didn't invent fan culture,
but it did organize it. It gave people a routine.
Get home, turn it on, vote, argue about where it
was as far as placement of the video, what number
it was, and then celebrate when your song or artist
moved up a spot. It made music feel interactive in
(22:45):
a way that matched where culture was heading. It also
created a new kind of star. Not just artists with hits,
but artists with a presence. Artists didn't just drop a
video and then hope it caught. They had to show up.
They had to be pretty good on camera. And they
had to be able to turn a three-minute song into
a whole personality that fans could rally behind every single day.
If you're trying to point to a things felt different
(23:07):
after this moment of 1998, TRL is a good one
to point to. It's not about a song going number one.
It's that suddenly there's a daily ranking that everybody's watching,
and that becomes the way people decide what's big. Everything
got more visual, more immediate, more competitive, and a lot
more dependent on what fans are willing to rally behind
and push to the top, right there in public, day
after day. Faith Hill releases This Kiss. Faith Hill's 1998
(23:32):
moment wasn't about her showing up on the map. She
was already there with massive hits like It's Your Love,
which was released in 1997. That song turned her and
Tim into the biggest thing in country music at the time.
So when 1998 rolls around, Faith wasn't chasing fame. She
was chasing something that felt bigger and for her own career.
That's what made this kiss such a clean turning point
(23:55):
for her and her career because it didn't sound like
she was leaving country music, but it also didn't sound
like it was built just for country radio. It naturally
organically was bigger than that. This kiss was released February 23rd,
1998 as the first single, from her album that was
called Faith. And it did everything an artist and a
label wanted a single to do. It hit number one
(24:17):
on the country charts in the US and Canada. It
crossed over in a noticeable way that didn't feel forced.
Peeking inside the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.
And what made this special for Faith was the crossover
didn't get in the way of her climb on country radio.
Sometimes when a song goes pop, country looks at it
and goes, ah, we don't like that as much anymore.
The song didn't become a pop hit that country tolerated.
(24:41):
It was a country hit first that also lived in
the pop world, which is hard to do now, but
it was really hard to do back then. And on
May 16th, 1998, This Kiss kicked off a three-week run
at number one on the Hot Country Songs chart. That
detail is very important because it proved it wasn't just
a quick spike or it wasn't just a quick curiosity.
(25:01):
It was country audiences embracing it even months after the release.
And you can hear why. I mean, the song still
stands up, but it was bright. It was catchy. It
gave Faith a way to sound playful and confident all
on her own. That's also why this record worked as
a career signal for her. When you look back at
Faith Hill's timeline, this kiss became one of those memorable
moments where you could point to it and see the
(25:22):
version of her career that was coming next. The bigger stage,
the broader audience, the kind of songs that didn't just
win over country radio, they were heard everywhere. So when
placing the release of this kiss on this countdown, the
point wasn't just Faith Hill had a number one, she
had done that already. The point was that 1998 was
the year she proved she could dominate country and pop,
(25:44):
and it was just the start of her expanding her name.
And now my 1998 non-country edition. In 1998, I actually
started working in radio. I was a teenager. 1998 is
the year I graduated high school. I went and I
begged for a job at our local radio station, 105.9 KLAZ,
(26:07):
and I begged for the job to clean the lobby
on Sundays and switch out the Rick D's weekly top
40 countdown. I got the job. Nothing crazy really wasn't
supposed to be on the air. And my first week
working there before I ever even cleaned a single lobby,
(26:29):
they fired someone for stealing station equipment. Now it was
a small radio station in a small town. It wasn't
like they had a ton of people. to just fill in.
So they needed somebody to jump on the air, do
an overnight shift on the weekend last minute. All my
paperwork was filled out. I was an employee there. So
(26:52):
you're in. That's me. I was that guy. So here
I am, a teenager, always wanted to be in radio,
getting the call up to the bigs. Well, not really
the bigs, but the smalls. But it was still a league.
I was pretty pumped about doing weekend overnights on 105.9 KLAZ,
(27:15):
one of the radio stations I listened to the most
growing up. Growing up, it was like five stations. Kissin'
96 out of Little Rock, which is a country station,
which had Bob Robbins on it. US 97, which was
the Hot Springs country station. 105.9 KLAZ, which was the
station that I was on. It was the pop station.
(27:36):
There was also Magic 105, which was the rock station.
And then there was Cool 95, Good Times and Great Oldies.
That was the station that my stepdad and I listened
to all the time and played trivia about who sang
what song. So the fact that I was getting to
be on one of the radio stations that I listened
(27:56):
to more than most other radio stations my whole life,
that was crazy to me. I didn't have a name.
I was just Bobby. And they said... You can be
Bobby Z or Bobby Bones. Spoiler, I picked Bobby Bones.
At least it sounded like a human. And I go
(28:16):
and I do weekend overnights. And I don't do terrible.
I was terrible, but I could hit all the right
buttons at the right time. And then I do weekend nights.
And from weekend nights, it didn't take long until I
was the guy every single night on 105.9 KLAZ. And
(28:37):
so this is 1998. And I do remember on a
pink disc when I had started my full-time night show
in 1998, this disc had written on it, dot, dot, dot,
(28:58):
hit me, baby, one more time. October of 1998. Britney Spears'
Baby One More Time hits. I looked it up. October 23rd,
MTV played the video for the first time. Nobody knew
that was going to be the biggest pop star in
the next decade or two. And the crazy thing about
(29:21):
this was that Britney Spears wasn't really filling a void.
Meaning music was already huge. Rock was already huge. Hip-hop
was already huge. Country was huge. It was the 90s,
for God's sake. We're doing this podcast on that. There
wasn't a dominant... teenage pop star, though.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
And that's.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
What happened suddenly there's a 16 year old she's from
Louisiana she was in a school girl you know it's
weird to say it now because I'm an adult man
but then I was only 18 so it was okay
okay school girl uniform kind of hard for me to
say because it felt kind of creepy but then it
wasn't creepy The song itself almost didn't happen. According to Lore,
(30:02):
several artists passed on it before it got to Britney.
And even the title confused people because it was dot, dot, dot,
maybe one more time, but the hit me was in parentheses.
And it's not really how people said stuff, but man,
it worked and everybody wanted to hear it. And this
(30:24):
is when we had legitimate request lines. where you would
answer the phones and see what people wanted to hear.
You'd mark it down on a chart, and then it's
not that you would play it right then, but then
you would go and you would show your boss, hey,
we got this many requests for this song, and then
it did factor into what was being played. And that
song was massive, obviously. And then, sometimes I run, sometimes
(30:48):
I fall, I cry, whatever it is. And one after
the other, boom. Britney had launched the new pop movement,
And then it was everything else that followed that was
part of what was bright and fun and polished and
catchy and kids loved it. And so Britney explodes and
the Backstreet Boys explode and NSYNC explodes and Christina Aguilera explodes.
(31:16):
Teen pop then becomes the dominant force in music. So
that's 1998. Again, you might think that's 2000s. And yes,
the 2000s That's when all that music became monster music.
But it started in 1998. And it started at my
first ever radio job. A guy that was almost named
(31:40):
Bobby Z was playing Britney Spears. I think Britney Spears
is one of the last music stars that became universally
famous without YouTube or Spotify or TikTok or streaming. I mean,
it was MTV. She was really one of the last artists, major,
major artists They got big just because of MTV, just
(32:02):
because of, it was really just radio and MTV, but
everybody knew who Britney Spears was. I don't think that
fame really happens again. So that's my discussion of 1998
Britney Spears. And not that it was a, big fan
favorite to me, but it was a big part of
my career because right when I started, that started. Now,
(32:24):
1998 was also a year of one of my top
five favorite movies of all time, which is The Truman Show.
And the story kind of gets a little more interesting
every single year. In 1998, The Truman Show, it hit
theaters and it was kind of seen as a clever,
what do you call it, a comedy drama. Is that
a thing? With Jim Carrey. Today it almost feels Black Mirror-ish,
(32:47):
if you watch Black Mirror, because a lot of those
shows they put out early are starting to kind of happen,
and you're like, man, that's crazy. But that's kind of
what this feels like, science fiction that was meant to
be absurd, but it sort of came true. If you
don't know and you haven't seen the movie, the premise
of the Truman Show is Truman Burbank. He doesn't know it,
but his entire life is a television show. Every moment
(33:09):
is being filmed. Everyone around him is an actor. Millions
of people watch him constantly. Again, in 1998, that seemed
absurd as far as real life. Like, who would voluntarily
let strangers watch their entire life? Sigh. Then came reality TV, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, influencers,
(33:30):
live streaming, live streaming, right? That's what that was, even
if he didn't know it, full live streaming. So millions
of people now essentially do Truman's life voluntarily. What's really
wild about all this when I was looking it up,
because again, this is one of my favorite movies ever,
is that this came out one year before Big Brother,
(33:52):
two years before Survivor. The reality television explosion hadn't happened yet,
but the Truman Show had. And it was made to
be fiction and crazy and wow, this will never happen,
but what if? And then what if kind of happened? 1998,
crazy year. I pulled up the chart for the biggest
songs in 1998. The Goo Goo Dolls, Iris. Jam, also
(34:18):
from a movie. Bare Naked Ladies, one week. I loved
that song mostly because it was one of those songs
that I felt like if I knew every single word
of the song, at some point in my life, it
would come on and I could sing along with it
and someone would be impressed. That's what I thought. Chickadee China,
the Chinese chicken. You have a drumstick and your brain
stops ticking. Watch your next Files with no lights on.
Your Dalai Mason. Smokey Mountain, this one. Like that thing, right?
(34:41):
Brandy and Monica, The Boy is Mine. Aerosmith, I Don't
Want to Miss a Thing from the movie. Armageddon, which
was also awesome. Semisonic, Closing Time. Third Eye Blind was rocking.
They had Jumper. Fastball, The Way. Obviously, Britney Spears, Baby
One More Time. Jay-Z, Hard Knock Life. Beastie Boys come
(35:01):
back with a second version of themselves with Intergalactic. You
know what? 1998 rocked. I'll say it. 1998 frickin' rocked. Well,
it did for me anyway. It's when I started one
small step For me, one giant step for my career.
(35:23):
And that is my 1998 non-country edition. Boom. Steve Warner
releases Holes in the Floor of Heaven. When you look
back on country music in the late 90s, Steve Warner
is one of those names that can sneak up on you.
He'd been around for a while, but by the time
(35:45):
1998 hit, He was the guy putting in all the
hard work for years. He had also done it in
a bunch of different lanes. What made this year stand
out for Steve wasn't some reinvention. It was Nashville putting
a spotlight on him and his music that felt long overdue.
His song, Holes in the Floor of Heaven, came out
in 1998. It was the lead single of his 13th
studio album, Burning the Roadhouse Down. The song was written
(36:08):
by Steve Warner and Billy Kirsch. It climbs all the
way to number two on the country charts in the U.S.
and Canada. Now, peaking at number two alone, would be
a great year for most artists, especially when you think
about how crowded it was in the late 90s because
of names like Shania and Garth and McGraw. But the
reason it lands as a big moment in 1998 on
this countdown is the awards that the song racked up.
(36:31):
Holes in the Floor of Heaven won Song of the
Year from the CMAs in 1998 and the ACMs in
1999 because it was so successful that it also crashed
into 1999. This award differs from other country music awards
because Song of the Year is pretty much the genre
saying this one had it all. It had the writing
and the structure, the emotional punch, and it just stuck
(36:53):
with people. This award was about the song itself, not
the hype around the artist or a big name or
a record label spending a bunch of money to get
it pushed up, which is why Warner fit perfectly. Steve
Warner wasn't the guy who needed a big personality to
carry a record. He had always been your favorite musician's musician,
the one who could play circles around a lot of people.
(37:15):
And this song hit because it resonated with the listener
and it allowed the audience to fill in the gaps
with their own life experiences. Now, from a career perspective,
this wasn't some comeback for Steve either. I mean, it
was a 13th studio album. It was more like a
checkpoint year where the industry noticed the quality of work
that Warner had been producing for a long time. And
(37:36):
he had the song now, They got the eyeballs on
him and the rest of the work that he had
been doing forever. You know, when you're an established artist,
you're not chasing that first break anymore. You're chasing songs
that can hold up for years to come. Songs that
can sit next to your best stuff without feeling like
a rerun. And that's what Holes in the Floor of
Heaven was for Steve Warner. It gave him one of
(37:57):
those late decade signature moments where everybody from fans to
award voters landed in the same place. This belongs on
this countdown because it's a reminder that that the biggest
moments aren't always attached to the biggest names in country music.
Sometimes it's one song, built the right way, widely accepted
by the audience buying the album, and then also accepted
(38:19):
by the critics within the industry. Hang tight. The Bobbycast
will be right back. Number three. Vince Gill gets his
first number one country album. You know, when you look
back at the late 90s and all the late 90s country,
Vince Gill is one of those names where the respect
(38:41):
comes as soon as someone brings him up. By 1998,
Vince Gill was not a new face in the genre
looking to break through. Vince had already been through the
grind of an artist by the late 90s. He spent
years proving he can write, he can sing, he can play,
and he can deliver records that don't fall apart after
a week of airplay. By the time 1998 rolled around,
(39:02):
Vince had the single success, the awards, the reputation, and
he was one of the cleanest singers in really any format,
really one of the best. He was also a rare
type of artist that when you talked about him in
the country music genre, he was treated like a technician
and a storyteller at the same time, which was very rare.
I mean, the voice that he has is obvious, but
(39:23):
the bigger thing with Vince is dependability. When Vince put
something out, it was always done in a way that
felt right and didn't feel forced and mostly felt like
true Vince Gill. So the reason that his album, The Key,
matters in 1998, it's not that it changes his story
as an artist, it's that it rewards the story he
had already built. Because singles and albums measure different things,
(39:44):
a number one single can really be about timing or
radio momentum or just The hook, the chorus of a
song being so impossible to ignore. An album going number one,
especially for an artist who's already established, signals something that
feels a little deeper than a song. The audience is
showing up for the artist, not just a track that
happens to be the most popular song this week or
(40:06):
this month. That's why August 11th, 1998 is a clean
marker on his timeline. That's the release date for The Key.
And it went number one on Billboard Top Country Albums
A first for Vince. The album had songs like, If
You Ever Have Forever In Mind, Kindly Keepin' It Country,
and Don't Come Cryin' To Me. What's funny is how
(40:27):
unsurprising it sounds when you say it out loud, because
by 1998, Vince Gill had already felt like a number
one album guy. So when it finally happens, it doesn't
land like a sudden breakthrough. It lands like the chart
is finally catching up to the level that he had
been working at for years. That's why this build-up moment
doesn't feel like a leap. It feels like he was
(40:48):
already there. And the key helps that case because it
doesn't come off like he's chasing whatever the late 90s
version of current is. There's no big shiny pivot. There's
no new Vince that they're marketing. It's the same core
strengths that Vince had built his entire career around. Sharp songwriting,
clean melodies, and that kind of vocal performance that is
(41:09):
all about control. So in a 1998 countdown, this belongs
in the career lane category. more than the splashy headline lane.
Vince doesn't need a plot twist to matter or to
be new. The story of Vince in 1998 is growth.
Years of dependable, excellent, and being unmistakably himself. And then
(41:30):
finally getting that specific album milestone that somehow hadn't clicked
into place yet. In 1998, he wasn't trying to be
somebody else. He just made a Vince Gill record. Steady, sharp, confident, good.
And this time, the album numbers matched the reputation. I've
been lucky enough to sit down with Vince Gill a
few times over the years. And so I played a
(41:51):
game with him when he was in studio one time.
We played Did Vince Say It? Did you say it?
Number one. I do not like being famous. I like
being normal.
Speaker 6 (42:01):
Yeah, I said that.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
That is correct. One point for Vince Gill. Thank you.
All right. Did Vince Gill say it? Bobby Bones is
one of the best things to happen to country music
in the last 30 years. I might have felt it,
but I don't know if I've said it out loud.
That is correct. You did not say it. I made
that up. All right. Good, good, good. All right. Did
Vince Gill say it? If you ain't first, you're last.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
No.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Ricky Bobby said that. That's correct. Vince Gill did not
say that. How about this one? Did you say it?
Success is always temporary. When all is said and done,
the only thing you'll have left is your character. You're
asking me? I'm asking you. Did you say it? I
said that, yes. Yes, you did say it. That is correct.
Speaker 5 (42:41):
One more.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Let's do one more. So far, you've nailed it here.
Did Vince Gill say it? Guitars are like women. You'll
never get them totally right.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
What?
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Okay. Amy, you can guess first because Vince looks like
he's puzzled if he may have thought this and not
said it. Guitars are like women. You'll never get them
totally right. Did Vince Gill say it?
Speaker 5 (43:00):
Amy? Yes.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Okay. Vince, did you say it? I might have to
plead the fifth on this one. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (43:05):
Might catch some crap for this one.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Well, Slash said it.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
You did not. So no, he did not say it.
But you're 100%. Vince Gill is 100% on did Vince
Gill say it. An unforgettable moment of 1998, the Monica
Lewinsky-Bill Clinton scandal. In 1998, Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton, they had
a scandal that goes from a White House story to
something the whole country is following day after day. This
was massive news. And the thing people may forget about
(43:29):
now is how hard it was to avoid. It wasn't
tucked into the politics section of the daily news. It
was everywhere. TV, radio, magazine covers at the grocery store.
Because there was always a new development, a new report,
a new quote, a new legal move. It turned into
this rolling daily narrative that people tracked like a television series.
The basic timeline moves fast. The allegations broke early in
(43:50):
the year. and quickly tied into the Starr investigation. Bill
Clinton went on television and denied it. Then by August,
he gave a statement acknowledging an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
After that, it was legal hearings and testimony and nonstop analysis.
And it just happened over and over and over again.
It reshaped the way politics were talked about in the mainstream. Suddenly,
(44:13):
the conversation wasn't just policy and elections. It was credibility.
It was personal conduct. It was media strategy. and whether
the rules are the same for powerful people and maybe
different for, well, everyone else. And whether you cared about
politics or not, almost everyone had an opinion on the story,
the people in the story, what the consequences should be.
Once 1998 set that pattern, wall-to-wall coverage, constant analysis, everything's
(44:39):
a cliffhanger. I mean, that style of political attention started
then and still hasn't gone away.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Number two. Jodi Messina breaks through with her first number one.
When you look back in 1998, that's the year Jodi
Messina goes from, oh yeah, I know that name, to
somebody that you hear every time you turned on country radio.
Because she's not brand new when she releases Bye Bye.
What a great song, by the way. She had already
been in the mix. People in Nashville knew the name.
(45:11):
Radio had heard the voice. She'd had songs that did
enough to keep her in the mix, in the conversations,
within the industry. But as you may know, there's a
difference in in the conversation or leading the conversation. In 1998,
she led the conversation. That's where the song Bye Bye
comes in. It comes out January 12th, 1998 as the
(45:35):
lead single from her album I'm Alright. And it becomes
her first number one on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.
That song is number one for two weeks, which is
a run. Especially in a format that was super crowded
in the late 90s. But the bigger tell is that
it doesn't just peak and get replaced. It hangs around
long enough to finish as one of the biggest country
songs of the entire year of Billboard's year-end list. And
(45:59):
that's the difference. Hitting number one, it's a big moment.
But showing up on the year-end list means it just
didn't have a moment. It just didn't have a hot stretch.
It did its thing, and then it stayed in rotation
for months. It's one of those songs that just kept
being played. It kept turning up all year. which is
a big deal in country music, again, in the late
90s when everybody was releasing bangers. The other reason it
(46:20):
works as a countdown moment here with us is the
attitude of the record. Bye Bye is not a shy
song about what she is saying. It's not trying to
sound sweet. It's not trying to fit neatly into whatever
else is on the radio. It's direct. It's confident. It's
got some edge to it, which is why it's so
easy to recognize right away. And when you've got that
kind of identifiable song, the career stuff starts shifting. The
(46:42):
follow-up single doesn't have to introduce you to the world again.
The bookings get easier. The momentum, it's not shaky because
now there's proof that your sound can carry. So in
a 1998 countdown, it's not just Jody's first number one.
It's the year Jody goes from a name you recognize
and maybe you've talked about to a name that now
(47:03):
exists and demands respect and you want to hear the song.
And that's what sets up the run that's still going
almost 30 years later. I talked to Jodi about this
song once and asked her what this song was about
when she released it. This is what she said. I
think at that point I sang about the strength I
wish I could have had. You know, I wish I
was that gutsy or I wish I was, you know,
bye bye love meanwhile, you know, and dating some guy
(47:25):
that treats you like garbage.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
The facade has ruined you all.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Number one, one, one.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
One, one, one, one.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
That's not an effect. That's my voice. Number one. The
Chicks release Wide Open Spaces. When you talk about the
clearest overnight career change of 1998, the Chicks, then the
Dixie Chicks, owned it with the release of Wide Open Spaces.
The album dropped January 27th, 1998. And on paper, it
looked like just a major label debut. But it was
(48:00):
also the very first record with Natalie Maines as the
lead vocalist. And you can hear why that matters almost immediately.
The harmonies felt tighter. There was personality. There was a
confidence in the delivery of the songs that made the
group sound less like a promising act and more like
a finished product. Like they already knew who they were
and they already knew the room they were walking into.
(48:21):
And the reason this belongs at the top of the
1998 countdown is because it wasn't just a one song wonder.
You don't look back and go, man, they had one
big hit on that album. Nope, not at all. That
album worked as an entire package. Multiple singles connect. The
project stays in heavy rotation. The success builds instead of
cooling off after the first or even second hit. Wide
(48:44):
Open Spaces sold more than 13 million copies in the U.S. alone.
It was the fourth best-selling country album of all time
after Shania Twain's Come On Over and Garth Brooks' No
Fences and Rope in the Wind albums. You can see
that in the charts how big it was. Wide open
spaces hit number one on Billboard's top country albums chart
and went all the way to number four on the
(49:04):
Billboard 200. And that's every genre. But let's focus on
that second number for a second. That's a sign of
the album reaching a much wider audience than just country
music fans. It means that people who aren't following country
radio week to week are still buying the album, still
talking about it, still hearing those songs. Then the awards
for the album start landing. The Chicks won two CMA
(49:24):
Awards in 1998, including Best Vocal Group of the Year
and the Horizon Award, now known as the Best New
Artist of the Year Award. And in 1999, Wide Open
Spaces won Album of the Year and New Duo or
Group of the Year at the ACMs and two Grammy Awards.
including Best Country Album and Best Country Performance. They were
winning everything. That's not a normal major label debut by
(49:45):
any standards. Most artists would take one of those lines
and call it a career. But the chicks did it
all at once. Chart dominance, crossover, major awards. So when
you place Wide Open Spaces into a 1998 countdown, the
point is straightforward. This is the launch of a major
label era with the first big proof that the ceiling
(50:05):
for a group like this was way higher than what
people assumed. Its intermediate scale, its staying power, and the
awards it was hauling tells you that it was just massive.
And it was good. It wasn't just hype. And for that,
the release of Wide Open Spaces from the Chicks lands
them at number one on the top ten moments in
country music from the year 1998. That'll do it for
(50:29):
our top ten moments in country music from the year 1998.
From breakout albums to Hall of Fame inductions and even
some political scandals, the year had it all. If there's
something you remember from the year that you would like
to hear on the countdown, just put a little comment
up there on social media or Spotify, wherever you get
your podcasts. And thanks for listening, and we'll talk to
you on the next episode, which is 1999. All right, bye, everybody.
(50:51):
Love this episode of The Bobbycast? Subscribe on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Bobby Bones
Amy Brown
Lunchbox
Eddie Garcia
Raymundo
Mike D
Abby Anderson
Scuba Steve
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