mleach said:
about country crossover hits...Pretty much the only place those "crossover" hits are found today is on country radio. Even our local Light AC station won't play Kenny Rogers' Lady much less Coward of the County. Of course some country songs like "This Kiss" and "Man..I Feel like a woman", I have heard those pop up on some Light Rock and even a few HOT AC stations but then again those versions are different sounding than the same song that gets played on country stations.
Last night my wife and I talked about those crossover hits and how songs like "Elvira" and groups like Alabama found themselves getting played on top 40 stations in the late 70s-early 80s, often as much as they did on country stations.
I believe two factors stopped the practice. One was MTV of course. Even though MTV went on the air in 1981, it really wasnt until the summer/fall of 1982 when a lot of people started to notice them and the whole idea of music videos. Not only did that end those country crossovers but also examples of Barry Manilow, The Carpenters and even The Pointer Sisters having hits on top 40 radio. Barry Manilow for example in the Spring of 1982 had a remake of the Four Seasons song "Lets Hang on" that actually got quite a bit of airplay on such "big" Top 40 stations at the time like Washington DC's Q107 and Baltimore's B-104. A year later both Q107 and B-104 wouldn't be caught dead playing Manilow tune, much less Alabama.
Another reason I have heard why country crossovers "died" was due to the fact that many of those artists, well they hated doing them. While Dolly Parton could have cared less that 9-5 was getting played on many rock stations others didn't share her lack of concerns. Juice Newton, I remember watching an interview with her back then when she made a comment where she said she really didn't like her songs like "Loves Been A Little Bit Hard on Me" getting airplay on rock stations since she felt "safer" in country music.
Oh..Joe Dolce's Shaddap Your Face was a big hit on Buffalo's WKBW as well. Actually the only place I remember hearing that song back then was on KB.
You're right that many current country tunes are written, recorded, mixed and remixed with crossover success in mind. One thing that I have noticed this time around is that it seems that more women are crossing over now, whereas back in the '70s and '80s it was mostly men. Of course, most of these songs are showing up on AC or "lite rock" radio, women-intensive formats.
Interesting theories about why crossovers died out in the early '80s. I both agree and disagree with what you have said here. I believe the rise of heavy metal in the early '80s helped crowd out country music from pop radio. It also crowded off soft-rockers like Air Supply, Captain & Tennille, etc. It may have spelled the end for the Carpenters, too, as you said, but I believe Karen Carpenter was probably already terminally ill by then, so it may not have mattered for them. Manilow actually started "rockin' out" (well, for him, anyway) about that time. Not only "Let's Hang On," which you mentioned, but also "Oh, Julie" and "Some Kind of Friend," the last of which may have cost him some fans! None of those were big hits for him. I don't think the Pointer Sisters were a good example, because they actually started having more and bigger hits about that time, well into the mid '80s. "I'm So Excited" was reissued, and went top 10 that second time out. And they shot videos for nearly all their '80s hits.
I believe you are right that many country performers thought that recording "crossover" tunes sacrificed their integrity with their true, core fans. But I think what killed it for me was when Kenny and Dolly recorded "Islands in the Stream." I hated that song! And yet it was #1 pop! (I don't know how it did on country.) It didn't even matter to me that it was written by the Bee Gees! (I think the Gibbs wrote everything on that particular album by Kenny Rogers.) I can't help but think that I wasn't the only one who felt that way! I really feel like a strong backlash against "Islands in the Stream" killed country crossovers for several years to come after that!
I heard a handful of country songs in the mid to late '80s that probably would have crossed over and become pop hits if they had been released earlier in the '80s. Eddie Rabbitt's cover of "The Wanderer" comes to mind as one example. Kenny and Dolly covered "Love is Strange" after it was re-popularized in
Dirty Dancing, but despite the popularity of that movie, no pop radio ever played it.
If you ever want to hear the BeeGees' own performance of "Islands in the Stream" (and "Grease," too, for that matter), you can hear them on the One Night Only CD and DVD.
