Dwight Yoakam

Classic country honky-tonk with a touch of punk rock.  As noted in my recent review of his new album, I wasn't listening to country music during Yoakam's early success, but latched on with his late 80's album Just Lookin' For a Hit.  My main reason for loving that album was the duet with Buck Owens on "Streets of Bakersfield," which was a frequent dance tune used at camp rodeo dances in my childhood.

That guitar solo at the start and tejano beat, its a thing of beauty.  "Hey you don't know me but you don't like me, say you care less how I feel."  Great tune.  That 1989 greatest hits album came along after only three albums (Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Hillbilly Deluxe, and Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room).  Pretty bold to fire out a hits album after only three albums in three years.  After that, he has two unremarkable albums until 1993's blockbuster This Time.  If you grew up in Texas, you remember seeing this album cover in your friend's car or dorm room at some point.  The big hit off of that album, which clocks in at third most-listened-to on Spotify, is "Fast as You," with 1.7 million listens.

That video is beautiful.  I bet country music videos from the early 90's would all be pretty amazingly bad.  I need to go on a binge watch.  Per YouTube, Yoakam's most popular cities are, no big surprise, Houston and Dallas.  Austin somehow clocks in at 30, behind such country music strongholds as Athens, Paris, Calgary, and Istanbul.  Actually, lots of Canadian cities in that top 30.  Wonder why?  Yoakam is from Tennessee and Ohio.  Weird.

Yoakam's most listened-to song is a kick ass tune, "Guitars, Cadillacs," with over 2.6 million listens on Spotify.

Wait, did that marquee just show that Yoakam shared a bill with the Violent Femmes?  That is amazing.  And yet another sweet video.  According to Wikipedia, his list of accolades is long, including:

• "more than 30 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts"
• "sold more than 25 million records"
• "5 Billboard #1 Albums, 12 Gold Albums, and 9 Platinum Albums, including the Triple Platinum This Time."
• "Honky Tonk Man" was the first country music video ever played on MTV.
• 2012's Three Pears "was named on annual best of lists by NPR, Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, AOL's The Boot, Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, and Rhapsody, and has been included in more critic's "best of 2012" lists than any other artist in the country genre."
• 3 Grammy Awards.

He is frequently credited with bringing country music to the rock and roll mainstream, as he left Nashville to move to L.A. and played shows at venues that would normally hold rock or punk shows. While I didn't go back and listen to all 25 albums offered by Spotify, I did jam several of the ones I didn't know.  The new album (Second Hand Heart) is good.  The greatest hits compilation released just before that (21st Century Hits" Best of 2000 - 2012) is not especially good.  I can dig 3 Pears.  My hope would be that the set is heavy on the classics, and a look at his most recent show has 6 songs from the new album out of 22 songs played, and the majority of those other tracks were his big hits.  Sounds awesome.