What's the best country song on Earth?

‘Alone and Forsaken’, by Hank Williams.

Dang. I love Hank and I didn’t know Alone and Forsaken. Intense!

It is of course This one

@ragingloli Sadly I cannot speak or understand German.

My dad was fluent in the language. Two of my great-grandparents came to America on a ship from Hamburg.

But I think the greatest country song is probably not German.

The one never written! (Best western song? “El Paso” by Marty Robbins.)

Oh, come on!

You’ve got yo be crazy.
Do you want to dance or feel blue?

There’s not one. I would probably need at least a top 100.
How could you decide a winner in a field that comprises Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Hank Williams Sr.?

LeAnn Rimes sings? I did not know that. That is a really good song.

I only know her from Daily Mail bikini photos. She’s linked there almost every day!

I love “Hello, Walls” and “By the Time” I Get To Phoenix.”

@ibstubro Will Nelson wrote Crazy.

You can hear its first recording on one of my top 5 favorite albums in Willie Nelson Crazy: The Demo Sessions

I actually knew that Willie wrote Crazy, @jaytkay.

Blue really is one of my all time favorites. What an amazing voice.

@Pachy Glen Campbell is so under-appreciated! He was kind of a TV-country cliche when I was young, but later I understood how his guitar work and song-writing is so beautiful.

@jaytkay, I so agree. I felt that way about him myself in the beginning, but he went on to impress me with so many of his songs. His current condition is very, very sad.

There are no good country songs

Since this is social…

We keep the radio in the kitchen on, 24/7, tuned to C&W. I bitch all the time because they don’t play and oldies, and the current music seems so…‘poppie’.
One day lately there was a piece on NPR about Country music. They played some songs, and then said they’d play some current traditional Country music. Seems the artists are still recording it on their albums, the radio stations just don’t play it. WTH!? If it’s not eligible to be a ‘crossover hit’ it doesn’t get airtime? That’s nuts.

The slow, languid, drawling wail of young Hank Williams, Sr. emitting from a radio on a long, dark, country night…

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind the clouds
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry

—Singer, songwriter, traveling troubadour and poet, Hank Williams, Sr.

If asked, I’d say I’m not into country music, but I love these songs. Are they the best country songs on earth? Probably not. I have no idea how anyone would define that.

Witchita Linesman

Forever begins tonight

Need you now

Landslide

Haven’t yet read the other responses. Will do so after posting.

Passionate Kisses by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Passionate Kisses is a great song. The writer, Lucinda Williams, is a huge favorite of mine. She got a Grammy for that song and so did Mary Chapin Carpenter.

@ibstubro I’m sorry you have to listen to “country” radio. It’s all really bad, formulaic bro’ pop. I’m taking a trip this week with a friend who plays it in the car. It’s painful.

If I play Johnny Cash or Emmylou he gets anxious and bored after about 3 minutes.

Ode To Billie Joe- Bobbie Gentry

@jaytkay
If your father spoke German, how can you not speak it?

Wow! This is hard.. Country is my favourite music genre. My answer would probably be different every time someone asked me this but today the song that sticks most in my mind is Amarillo by Morning by George Strait.

Or She’s Got You by Patsy Cline!

I wish I had a country oldies station available, @jaytkay. Occasionally I get fed up and put on a Willie or Randy Travis CD.

Yeah, compare that to the country-pop sensation I Got the Boy, @OpryLeigh.

@raginloli My dad learned a little German from his immigrant grandparents, and studied the language in high school and college. Then he spent two years over there in the US army in the early 1950s. But after that he didn’t use it much.

“I’m just a cunt…ry boy, with hairs on my knob…bly knees”

@ibstubro I (and others may) call it “country pop.” SO not country-western! Not even “truck driver” music. (Music???)

Let us be clear – there’s country and there’s Nashville’s pop-“country” shite. And Nashville fucking sucks. Waylon Jennings said it 40 years ago with “I don’t think Hank done it this way”, and the Nashville scene has pretty much only gotten steadily further from true country and more towards pop in the years since. I remember two decades ago hearing Shania Twain and thinking “Christ, this is what they’re passing off as “country” these days?”.