Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

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MIRANDA LAMBERT SANG “CHOOSIN’ TEXAS” IN SALINAS — AND SOME FANS MAY NOT HAVE REALIZED HOW MUCH OF THE SONG WAS HERS. Lambert co-wrote the hit with Ella Langley, Luke Dick, and Joybeth Taylor. She also co-produced it with Ella and Ben West. So when Miranda sang it at the California Rodeo Salinas Big Week Kick Off Concert on July 11, she was not simply covering another artist’s No. 1. Her fingerprints had been on it from the beginning. “Choosin’ Texas” became the most-streamed song in the United States during the first half of 2026. Ella’s voice carried it around the world, but Miranda helped find the words, shape the recording, and put a little Lindale truth inside every line. It may be Ella Langley’s hit. But in Salinas, Miranda reminded everyone that part of the road to Texas began with her.

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Miranda Lambert Reminded Salinas That “Choosin’ Texas” Was Never Just Ella Langley’s Story When Miranda Lambert stepped onto the stage…

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WHEN ALAN JACKSON SANG “HE STOPPED LOVING HER TODAY” ON THE GRAND OLE OPRY STAGE THAT THURSDAY MORNING, HE COULDN’T FINISH WITHOUT TAKING OFF HIS WHITE COWBOY HAT — A FINAL SALUTE TO THE MAN LYING IN THE CASKET JUST BELOW HIM. George Jones died on Friday, April 26, 2013, at the age of 81, from hypoxic respiratory failure. He had been hospitalized since April 18 with a fever and irregular blood pressure. Six days later, thousands gathered at the Grand Ole Opry House, some lining up the night before, others arriving hours before sunrise, to honor the man they called The Possum. A wreath graced the front door of the Opry House — just like the lyric from his signature song. Vince Gill’s steady tenor cracked mid-song as Patty Loveless had to pick up the lead. Former First Lady Laura Bush, governors, and nearly every giant in Nashville spoke or sang during the almost three-hour service. Then Jones’ own recording of “When the Last Curtain Falls” played over the speakers as pallbearers carried his casket off that Opry stage one final time. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Nashville — not far from the circle of wood where his voice had lived for fifty-seven years.

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When George Jones Took His Final Bow at the Grand Ole Opry On Thursday, May 2, 2013, the Grand Ole…

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AT 72, LORETTA LYNN MADE THE BOLDEST ALBUM OF HER LATER YEARS — THEN TOOK HOME TWO GRAMMYS. By 2004, Loretta Lynn had nothing left to prove. Nashville already knew her as the Coal Miner’s Daughter, the woman who had spent decades singing truths other people were afraid to say aloud. But she was not interested in becoming a museum piece. With Jack White producing, Loretta recorded *Van Lear Rose*, an album built around songs she had written herself. He brought distorted guitars and a rougher sound, but he never tried to turn her into someone new. He simply gave her stories room to hit harder. Loretta sang about her childhood in Kentucky, the wounds inside marriage, jealousy, survival, and the complicated life behind the famous name. Her voice sounded older because it was older—but it had lost none of its authority. The album surprised critics, reached a new generation, and earned Loretta two Grammys: Best Country Album and Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for “Portland Oregon.” It was not a young producer rescuing an aging legend. It was Loretta Lynn reminding everyone that she had never needed rescuing.

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At 72, Loretta Lynn Made the Boldest Album of Her Later Years — Then Took Home Two Grammys By the…

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MARTY ROBBINS DROVE THROUGH EL PASO THREE CHRISTMASES IN A ROW. THE SONG REFUSED TO FOLLOW HIM HOME UNTIL THE THIRD TRIP. The idea first found him in December 1955. Marty was traveling toward Arizona for Christmas when he noticed El Paso on a highway sign. It sounded like a song title. He held the thought for a moment, then lost it somewhere down the road. A year later, the same thing happened. The city appeared. The idea stirred. Still, no song came home with him. Then came Christmas 1957. His wife drove their turquoise Cadillac through West Texas while Marty sat in the back seat. This time, the words would not leave him alone. He began writing as the melody and story arrived together—the cowboy, the cantina, Felina, and the final ride back into danger. By the time they had passed El Paso, Marty finally had the song he had been chasing for three years. He recorded it in 1959. Radio thought the full version was too long. Listeners chose the whole story and carried it to No. 1. Some songs are written in a room. “El Paso” waited for Marty on the highway.

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Marty Robbins and the Long Road to “El Paso” Some songs arrive in a burst. Others seem to circle a…

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ELLA LANGLEY’S FIRST GUITAR HAD ALREADY BELONGED TO SOMEONE SHE LOVED — AND LOST. Long before the awards, sold-out crowds, and a No. 1 song called “Choosin’ Texas,” there was an old guitar waiting inside Ella Langley’s family. It had belonged to her grandfather. He was the kind of man who could hear a melody and find it on almost any instrument. When Ella was little, she would sit near him at the piano, humming along before she was old enough to understand what music might one day become in her life. After he died, Ella’s father, Jason, took his guitar and had it restrung. Then he placed it in his daughter’s hands. It was not new. It did not come from a Nashville music store, and no famous name had signed it. The wood already carried years of another person’s songs. Every worn place on it belonged to someone Ella could no longer sit beside. But when she learned her first chords, she was not beginning alone. That guitar became more than an instrument. It was a quiet connection between generations — a grandfather’s love passing through a father’s hands to a young girl with a voice nobody outside Alabama knew yet. Before Ella inherited a country career, she inherited the reason to begin one.

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Ella Langley’s First Guitar Carried a Family Story Before It Ever Carried a Song Before Ella Langley became a rising…

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THE STROKE TOOK HER VOICE AT 85. THE BROKEN HIP TOOK HER ABILITY TO STAND. AT 88, FROM A STUDIO BUILT INSIDE HER OWN HOUSE, SHE RECORDED HER FIFTIETH ALBUM AND NAMED IT STILL WOMAN ENOUGH. She was Loretta Lynn — the coal miner’s daughter from Butcher Hollow, Kentucky who married at thirteen, raised four children before twenty, and changed country music by writing the songs other women were too afraid to sing. In May 2017, a stroke ended fifty-seven years of touring overnight. Eight months later, on January 1, 2018, she fell at her Hurricane Mills ranch and broke her hip. She was 85. Most artists in her position would have called it a career. Her family told her to rest. Her doctors said she wouldn’t sing again. Loretta looked her own broken body in the eye and said: “No.” There’s a reason Loretta refused to leave Hurricane Mills after the stroke — a reason that has everything to do with the small cemetery on the property where her husband Doo was buried in 1996. In March 2021, at 88 years old, she released Still Woman Enough. Fifty albums. A title pulled from a song she’d written five decades earlier. She brought Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, and Tanya Tucker onto the title track — three generations of women singing back the line she’d given them. She died nineteen months later, on October 4, 2022, in her sleep at the ranch. She was 90. Her daughter Peggy was beside her. That’s not a final album. That’s a coal miner’s daughter who refused to let a stroke decide which song would be her last.

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Still Woman Enough: Loretta Lynn’s Final Act of Defiance When Loretta Lynn released Still Woman Enough in January 2021, she…

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THE DAY AFTER MARTY ROBBINS DIED, “EL PASO” SOUNDED LESS LIKE A SONG — AND MORE LIKE A FINAL RIDE. On December 9, 1982, Marty Robbins’ voice was still coming through radios and old records, calm as ever, smooth as ever. But the man behind those stories was gone. Just one day earlier, Marty had died in Nashville after years of heart trouble, leaving country music with a strange kind of silence — not empty, but full of dust, guitars, gun smoke, and distance. For decades, “El Paso” had felt like a movie inside a song. You could almost see the rider, the desert, the regret, the last turn back toward love. But the day after Marty was gone, it felt different. It no longer sounded like he was telling the story. It sounded like he had ridden into it. That was Marty Robbins’ gift. He didn’t just sing the West. He made it breathe. And when he left, the song kept playing — like hoofbeats fading where no one could follow.

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The Day After Marty Robbins Died, “El Paso” Felt Like a Farewell Ride On December 9, 1982, Marty Robbins was…

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LAINEY WILSON HAD NO IDEA WHY THE LITTLE GIRL SHE CROWNED “COWGIRL OF THE NIGHT” NEEDED THOSE WORDS MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE ARENA. At every stop on the Whirlwind Tour, Lainey pulls a young fan onstage, places her signature cowgirl hat on the girl’s head, and leads her through a set of affirmations: I am beautiful, I am smart, I am talented, I can do anything. At one show, the girl she chose repeated every word to a cheering crowd while her family watched from the seats, carrying news Lainey wouldn’t hear until afterward. It was her photographer who told her. The girl’s mother had recently been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. And those words Lainey had that child say onstage — about being beautiful, smart, capable of anything — suddenly carried a weight that stopped her cold. If her mama couldn’t be there to say them one day, that stage may have been one of the last places someone did. Lainey asked her team to find the family before they left the venue — and the cameras following her that night were still rolling when they did.

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Lainey Wilson, a Little Girl, and the Moment “Cowgirl of the Night” Became Something Bigger At every stop on Lainey…

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JEANNIE C. RILEY DIDN’T WANT TO RECORD “HARPER VALLEY P.T.A.” IT MADE HER THE FIRST WOMAN TO TOP COUNTRY AND POP — THEN TRAPPED HER INSIDE THE WOMAN SHE SANG ABOUT. In 1968, Jeannie was working as a secretary on Music Row, singing demos and watching Nashville pass her by. When producer Shelby Singleton offered her a story-song about a widowed mother confronting a hypocritical PTA, Jeannie was not impressed. She thought it sounded too much like another “Ode to Billie Joe.” Still, she recorded it. Within weeks, “Harper Valley P.T.A.” reached No. 1 on both Billboard’s country chart and the Hot 100. A secretary became a national star almost overnight. But Nashville did not simply sell Jeannie’s voice. It turned her into Mrs. Johnson. The miniskirts. The tall boots. The defiant image. Audiences expected Jeannie to remain the outspoken woman from the song, while some of the same people buying the record criticized her appearance. The contradiction was almost perfect. Jeannie had become famous singing about a woman judged for her clothes and private life. Then the music business gave America a real woman to judge.

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Jeannie C. Riley Didn’t Want to Record “Harper Valley P.T.A.” — But It Changed Everything In 1968, Jeannie C. Riley…

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LORETTA LYNN SPENT MOST OF HER BIRTHDAY CONCERT WATCHING FROM THE SIDE. THEN CRYSTAL GAYLE OFFERED HER THE MICROPHONE. On April 1, 2019, Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena filled with artists honoring Lynn ahead of her 87th birthday. A 2017 stroke had ended her regular touring, so performances by Garth Brooks, George Strait, Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban and others carried the evening while she listened. The finale was “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Crystal Gayle encouraged her sister to join in, but Lynn initially declined. What made her suddenly reach for the microphone moments later? Once she began singing, the stars gathered behind her grew louder and the arena rose with them. It was not a planned farewell, and nobody in the room could know what the moment would later represent. Before joining the song, however, Loretta delivered one unmistakably Loretta sentence—and Crystal immediately handed over the mic.

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Loretta Lynn Spent Most of Her Birthday Concert Watching From the Side. Then Crystal Gayle Offered Her the Microphone On…

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THEY GATHERED AT THE GRAND OLE OPRY TO SAY GOODBYE. ALAN JACKSON SANG THE SONG HE HAD WRITTEN FOR HIS OWN MOTHER. Loretta Lynn had come out of a Kentucky coal camp with almost nothing. She married young, raised children while still barely grown herself, learned guitar on a seventeen-dollar instrument, and eventually made country radio hear things women were not supposed to say out loud. Marriage. Poverty. Cheating. Birth control. Anger. Survival. On October 4, 2022, Loretta died at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. She was 90. Twenty-six days later, her family, friends and fans gathered at the Grand Ole Opry House for a public celebration of her life. George Strait sang “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’,” Loretta’s first No. 1 hit. Tanya Tucker sang “Blue Kentucky Girl.” Keith Urban played a voicemail Loretta had once left him before singing “You’re Lookin’ at Country.” Then Alan Jackson walked onto the stage. He did not choose one of Loretta’s hits. He chose “Where Her Heart Has Always Been,” the song he had written after losing his own mother. Before singing, Alan explained that Loretta had always reminded him of her — both women were sweet, genuine, outgoing, and never afraid to tell you exactly what they thought. For decades, America knew Loretta Lynn as the Coal Miner’s Daughter. That night, Alan Jackson remembered something simpler. She reminded him of Mom.

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HE DIED IN A SAN ANTONIO HOSPICE ON A FRIDAY, AND NO PUBLIC FUNERAL WAS EVER ANNOUNCED. THE GOODBYES ARRIVED ON PHONE SCREENS INSTEAD. Johnny Rodriguez was the second-youngest of ten children in a four-bedroom house in Sabinal, Texas, ninety miles from the border. He was eighteen and locked in a county jail cell when a Texas Ranger heard him singing through the bars and made a phone call to a promoter. That call is the entire career. Church choir. Jail cell. Nashville. Six number ones. On May 9, 2025, Johnny died in San Antonio after entering hospice care. He was 73. There was no service at the Ryman, no line outside a chapel. His daughter Aubry announced it herself in an Instagram post, writing that he had gone peacefully with family around him. The tributes came the same way — typed on phones. Sammy Arriaga wrote that Johnny had given him the courage to be a country singer with Latino roots. Then George Strait posted. Not a press statement. An Instagram story — the kind that disappears after a day. Strait, a South Texas boy himself, wrote that Johnny’s success made him think “maybe there was hope for a guy like me.” He opened that door in 1973. Carthage, Texas, put him in its Hall of Fame in 2007. Nashville’s has still never called his name.

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LORETTA LYNN SIGNED HER FIRST RECORDING CONTRACT IN 1960. SEVEN YEARS LATER, SHE BECAME THE FIRST WOMAN EVER NAMED CMA FEMALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR. When Loretta Lynn entered music, she was already a wife and mother raising a family in Washington state. She had taught herself to play a guitar her husband bought for her and begun singing in local taverns and community halls. In February 1960, Loretta signed her first recording contract with the small Zero Records label. There was no powerful Nashville company waiting to make her famous. Loretta and her husband drove from town to town, carrying copies of “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” into radio stations and asking disc jockeys to play it. They slept cheaply, saved every dollar and promoted the record themselves. Slowly, country music began listening. Loretta joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1962. She sang about marriage, motherhood, poverty and unfaithful husbands with a honesty many women recognized from their own lives. Then came October 1967. At the first CMA Awards ceremony, Loretta was named Female Vocalist of the Year—the first woman ever to receive the honor. Seven years earlier, she had been walking into radio stations with her own record under her arm. Now country music was placing its highest female vocal award in her hands.

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TWELVE DAYS AFTER ALAN JACKSON PLAYED HIS FINAL CONCERT, THE MAN WHO HAD SPENT DECADES LEAVING HOME FOR THE ROAD WELCOMED HIS FIFTH GRANDCHILD. On June 27, 2026, Alan Jackson stood inside Nashville’s Nissan Stadium for the final full-length concert of his touring career. His wife Denise was there. So were their three daughters and their growing families. At one point, Alan looked toward them and smiled. “We have three wonderful daughters and son-in-laws, and now we’ve got 4.75 grandchildren,” he told the crowd. Their youngest daughter, Dani, was expecting a baby at any moment. For more than three decades, Alan’s life had been measured by buses, hotel rooms, sound checks and the next city on the schedule. Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease had gradually made standing and walking more difficult, and the Nashville finale closed that chapter of his life. Then, only 12 days after the final song, the number changed. On July 9, Dani and her husband Sam welcomed Samuel Hudson Carrington, known as Hudson. He became Alan and Denise’s fifth grandchild. The family shared a photograph of the new grandparents beside their daughter and newborn grandson. The stadium had held tens of thousands of people. The next important gathering was small enough to fit inside one room. Alan Jackson’s touring years ended with applause. His days at home began with Denise beside him, three daughters close by, and a new grandson arriving almost as soon as the road finally let him go.