This Month in '90s Country

The week the biggest star in country music released an album by somebody else

The plan, on paper, wasn't crazy. Garth Brooks was going to star in a film called The Lamb, playing a fictional rock musician looking back across the eras of his career. The album would be that character's greatest hits — released a year ahead of the movie to build interest in Brooks doing something other than country.

The character was Chris Gaines: an Australian rock star, soul patch, dark wig, the whole thing. Don Was produced. The cover didn't say Garth Brooks anywhere obvious — it said Chris Gaines Greatest Hits. VH1 aired a Behind the Music episode filling in the fictional backstory.

Released September 28, 1999, it confused nearly everyone who encountered it.

Here's the part that stings, though. The lead single, "Lost in You," reached number 5 on the pop chart — a genuine mainstream crossover, the exact thing Brooks had been reaching for. On the country chart, it stalled at 62. He got the pop hit. He just didn't get it as himself.

The album peaked at number 2 on the Billboard 200 and went double platinum, numbers most artists would take gladly — and which, for Brooks in 1999, counted as a failure. The Lamb was never filmed; the financing and management fell apart. In November he hosted Saturday Night Live as himself and performed the musical number as Gaines, never telling the audience they were the same person.

For years afterward the whole project simply vanished from his official history.

Chris Gaines — "Lost in You," produced by Don Was · No. 5 pop, No. 62 country, 1999

Two Septembers, one band, and the fastest rise of the decade

The Dixie Chicks formed in Dallas in 1989 and spent most of the nineties as a band almost nobody outside Texas had heard of. Three independent records, a shifting lineup, sisters Martie and Emily anchoring it, and no traction with radio at all.

In late 1995, 21-year-old Natalie Maines came in as lead singer. Her father Lloyd Maines — the steel player who'd introduced her to the sisters in the first place — ends up playing on the record that followed. According to a 1998 Dallas Observer piece, the earlier singers' departures had to do with the Erwin sisters wanting a younger image.

Sony signed them in 1997 and used them to relaunch the dormant Monument imprint. The band insisted on playing their own instruments in the studio, which was unusual for an established country group and close to unheard-of for a new one. They also insisted the banjo stay prominent on the title track.

On September 23, 1998, they won the CMA Horizon Award — the new-artist prize — and Vocal Group of the Year on the same night. One year later, on September 22, 1999, they won three more, including Single of the Year for "Wide Open Spaces."

Wide Open Spaces went on to become the best-selling album by a group in country music history, moving twelve million copies without a pop crossover hit to carry it. The follow-up, Fly, sold ten million. In 2000 they were named CMA Entertainer of the Year.

Four Septembers after the Horizon Award, everything about their standing in the format would change. That's a different story, and not a nineties one.

Dixie Chicks — "Wide Open Spaces" · CMA Horizon Award, September 23, 1998 · CMA Single of the Year, September 22, 1999

The man who hosted the entire decade

Here's a piece of nineties trivia hiding in plain sight. Run the CMA Awards host list from the middle of the decade forward and it's the same name every year: Vince Gill, 1994. Vince Gill, 1995. 1996. 1997. 1998. And on September 22, 1999, Vince Gill again.

He'd co-hosted in 1992 with Reba McEntire and in 1993 with Clint Black before taking it solo. By the 1999 broadcast he was working his ninth consecutive year on that stage.

What makes it odd is that he wasn't a retired elder statesman doing ceremonial duty. He was competing in the show he was running. In 1993 he walked in with eight nominations and left with five wins — the most of anyone that night — while also hosting it. In 1996 he had seven nominations. In 1999 he was tied with Tim McGraw for the most nominations of anyone, five apiece, and hosting.

Imagine the logistics: read the nominees, hand off to a commercial, walk to your seat, lose or win, walk back out, keep the show moving, be gracious either way, for three hours, on CBS, on live television, every year for the better part of a decade.

Country music spent the nineties being remade by people who sold stadium tickets. The person the industry kept handing the microphone to, year after year, was the guitar player who could sing.

Vince Gill — host, CMA Awards, 1992–1999 · Most wins of the night, 1993 (five)