Song 10:
"Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus
Peak: 4
Year: 1992
Year end position: 15
Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/1
Chronological Songs by Artist: 1/1
Video?: Yes
Spotify?: Yes
Before I get into this song today, I
feel I need to take some time to discuss the tone of this blog. I used to
watch a TV show on VH1 that was called “I Love the 80s”. They had some
other “I Love the XXs” shows that had the same format and finally “Best Week
Ever”. The shows were essentially comedians that would be given some
piece of pop culture, and they would make jokes about it. After watching
enough of these types of shows, they started to seem a little mean spirited to
me. My approach to this blog is to try to be even handed about these
songs. Whether you like the songs or not, they all, at one time or
another, were very popular. I think it’s easy to poke fun at stuff that
seems out of style now.
That brings us to today’s
song. VH1 and Blender magazine put out a list of the “50 Most Awesomely
Bad Songs… Ever”. This song was #2 on that list (“We Built This
City” by Starship was #1). Considering that 11 of the 50 songs on that
list are currently on a playlist that I have named “Favorites”, it is safe to
say I disagree. I actually disagree with the premise of the list.
These songs are only considered “bad” in retrospect. The reason we
remember them at all is because they were popular enough at one time to be
remembered. I’m not sure what the motivation is to put a list like this
together. It just seems mean to me.
Now that I’ve had my soap box
moment, let’s get into this song. Remember how I said yesterday that not
all one-hit wonders are built the same? I think that applies here.
I had to double check the numbers on this one since it seems like Billy Ray
Cyrus has been popular for a long period of time. I figured that he
surely had another hit. Not the case. This was his only song to
make the top 20. He actually only had one other song even crack the top
40, and that was a duet with his daughter Miley called “Ready, Set, Don’t Go”
in 2007. That song only made it to #37. He had considerably more
success on the country chart, with 10 top 20 songs. Maybe that’s why I
thought he had more pop success.
This song came out in 1992, which
seems like an important year in country music. In the post about
“Abeline”, I mentioned that there is an interesting parallel relationship
between country music and pop music. There was a brief run in the early
80s where country was popular, but then it fell far out of style as New Wave
and Metal music dominated the pop charts. In 1992, modern country
was staging a comeback on the Hot 100, and Billy Ray was at the very beginning
of that trend. A few years later, acts like Tim McGraw and Shania Twain
would start breaking through to the pop chart, but Billy Ray was really a
forerunner to those acts.
I was surprised to see that this
song was nominated for both Record and Song of the year, losing both of them to
“Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton. I think that speaks to just how
popular this song was at the time. There seemed to be a real craze around
this song. My opinion of the popularity of this song is that it marks the
first time I can remember that country line dancing came to prominence.
Line dancing had been around for a long time. The Hustle is essentially a
line dance, as is the Electric Slide and the Chicken Dance. The “Achy
Breaky” came around and it seemed to really capture the cultural zeitgeist.
The lyrics to the song are almost
secondary to the associated line dance. Apparently this song was written
for the Oak Ridge Boys, but the lead singer didn’t like the words “Achy
Breaky”, so they passed on it. How it came to Billy Ray Cyrus, I’m not
sure. He was certainly lucky that it did. The lyrics read
essentially as a break-up song. A girl is breaking up with Billy Ray, and
he feels like he won’t be able to take it if he fully realizes what’s going
on. He recites a laundry list of parts of him you could tell, except for
his heart (as if they are separate, cognizant things). It’s kind of
catchy. Like I said, the lyrics seem secondary to the line dance in the
popularity of this song.
There is a video for this
song. It’s essentially a concert video. Billy Ray is on stage the
entire time. People are line-dancing in the crowd. However, if you
are looking to learn how to do the “Achy Breaky” by watching the video, I think
that you are going to be disappointed. I didn’t see any part of the video
where the camera stays anywhere long enough to catch all the steps. I
guess if you want to learn it, you’ll have to go to your favorite country
bar. I bet they still play this song today.
No comments:
Post a Comment