Mountain Music

A funny thing happens as the ‘80s get underway. After years of boundary-breaking cross-pollination and popularity, after country's biggest stars score some of their biggest hits with monster pop crossovers, Country music starts once more to sound like…Country. Yes, Willie Nelson records an easy-listening love song he didn't write — Johnny Christopher, Mark James and Wayne Carson's timeless and lovely “You Were Always On My Mind” — and comes away with a career-defining, catch-phrase generating monster; but, spurred on by the likes of natural-born picking prodigy Ricky Skaggs and his guitar-and-fiddle-driven cover of Guy Clark's “Heartbroke,” Country songs are stripping back down to essentials — the steel-guitar, Opry-style harmonies and hurtin' heart of Charly McClain's “Who's Cheatin' Who, or the buffed-up but still rough honky-tonk triangle of Country icon Conway Twitty's “Tight Fittin' Jeans.”