While some artists have dug up specific memories to create enduring songs, others have simply charmed us with tales of the good ol’ days, a time when life was simpler and people were happier, or so it often seems in hindsight. Songs like Miranda Lambert’s recent No. 1 “Automatic” or the Judds’ classic “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Old Days)” can give us comfort as they spin stories about how back in the day we all got by with less and were plenty happy about it.
To accompany our recent Country Clichés feature, which looks at the various forms of nostalgia in country music dating back to the 1920s, we’ve come up with ten songs from the past several decades that show the different forms nostalgia can take in contemporary country music. And how, to paraphrase Dierks Bentley, those songs about the past might help us all “move on” into the future that still lies ahead.
10. Dierks Bentley, “I Hold On”
Bentley has a lot of songs about being on the road, from “Every Mile a Memory,” about creating memories with each new place he visits, to his new song “Damn These Dreams,” about the pain of leaving his family to head out on tour. His recent single “I Hold On,” though, stops for a few minutes to look back at past experiences. He remembers the truck he and his dad drove to Nashville when he was just starting out (a truck he still drives to this day); he sings about the guitar that has helped him create songs over the years; and he looks back at first meeting his wife. “I Hold On” may be about holding onto those memories, yes, but it’s not a simple revisiting of the past—it’s an opportunity to, in many ways, say thanks to everyone and everything that’s helped make Bentley the man he is today.
9. Dolly Parton, “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)”
Dolly Parton’s 1968 song—the title track to her third solo album—is also a look back to simpler times. In this case, though, she willingly admits that life wasn’t always pleasant back then: hailstorms beat their crops “to the ground,” daddy sometimes worked so hard his hands would “break open and bleed” and the family went to bed hungry more than once. Sure, Parton holds on to that experience: “No amount of money could buy from me the memories that I have of then,” she sings. But at the same time, she’s also a realist: “No amount of money could pay me to go back and live through it again.”
8. Eric Church, “Springsteen”
We all have those songs, the ones from childhood, adolescence and beyond that take us back to a specific time and place. For Eric Church, it was the music of Bruce Springsteen. His song “Springsteen,” though, isn’t just about that particular memory in his own past, it’s about how powerful music can be in our lives. Sometimes we need triggers to help us remember the past—and to keep us on track as we move forward.
7. Merle Haggard, “Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)”
A patriotic theme lies at the core of Merle Haggard’s 1982 classic “Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver).” At the same time, though, the song shows Haggard pining for the days “before microwave ovens” when “a Ford and a Chevy could still last ten years, like they should” and “a man could still work, still would.” But unlike many songs of nostalgia, whose sentiment for the past stops right there, Haggard takes that feeling a step further and turns his lament for the way things were into a call to action. “Stop rolling down hill like a snowball headed for Hell,” he sings. Maybe then, he posits, we can once again “make a Ford and a Chevy” that will “still last ten years like they should.”
6. The Judds, “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Old Days)”
With their 1986 hit “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Old Days),” the Judds sang about easing the stress of the present by looking back to a simpler, bygone era. “Grandpa, everything is changing fast,” they sang, “We call it progress, but I just don’t know.” Grandpa likely didn’t have all the answers—”Did lovers really fall in love to stay?” they ask—but he obviously had some good stories.
5. Ronnie Dunn, “I Wish I Still Smoked Cigarettes”
Ronnie Dunn’s song isn’t really about wanting to take up smoking again, it’s about wanting to gain back the feeling, the drive and the energy of being young. The former Brooks & Dunn singer illustrates all that with lines remembering how good it felt at the time to light up a smoke, step into a muscle car and drive wherever, and whenever, he wanted. “I felt more grown up then,” he sings. “We were talking about where we were gonna go, instead of where we’d been.”
4. Kenny Chesney, “When I See This Bar”
Kenny Chesney’s 2013 single is all about digging back into old memories, reflecting, chewing and otherwise tossing them around to see what sort of emotions play out as a result. The memories here revolve around one place—a bar in the tropics that he’s long frequented and where he learned a life lesson or two. The bar represents a particular point in Chesney’s life, one that he eventually grew out of, once he took on new goals and responsibilities. Neither “place” is necessarily better or worse than the other, just different. “Pieces of our past slowly slip away,” he sings. It’s a familiar feeling, one we’ve all experienced. And while Chesney may be in a different place now, the moment he steps back into this bar, “time just stands still.”
3. Miranda Lambert, “The House That Built Me”
Lambert didn’t write “The House That Built Me,” but she made it her own. The GRAMMY- and ACM Award-winning song and its accompanying video turned the composition—penned by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin—into her own personal story. She admits at the start of the song that “you can’t go home again,” but that doesn’t stop Lambert from asking the new residents of her childhood home for “one last” look around inside. “I thought if I could touch this place or feel it/This brokenness inside me might start healing,” she sings. Because “out here it’s like I’m someone else.”
2. George Jones, “The Grand Tour”
George Jones’ classic down-and-outer is like the flip side to the above Alabama song. In “The Grand Tour,” Jones painfully revisits the house that was once “home sweet home” for him, his wife and their baby, ticking off items in the house and detailing memories of how wonderful life once was at the time. His wife and child, though, are now gone. We don’t know where, in fact we don’t know much about the circumstances that led to this moment, except that she left him “without mercy.” But it doesn’t matter. The song is about a man who’s still holding onto a past that no longer exists, and we feel his pain as he tries to make sense of what just happened.
Hanging onto a painful past, in fact, is common in country music. Randy Travis took on similar subject matter with his single “Diggin’ Up Bones” from his landmark 1986 album Storms of Life, And more recently Jamey Johnson sang about “Mowin’ Down the Roses,” which took that sadness and added an edge of revenge. All are powerful songs, just pick your poison.
1. Alabama, “Mountain Music”
This is not just one of beloved country group Alabama’s most popular recordings, it’s among the most enduring country sing-alongs of the past several decades. The mood in the song is deliberately happy and the energy upbeat. It’s a song that remembers the past in a positive light and is designed for sunny days, dances on the porch, floating on a lazy river or picnics on the ground. Eat, drink and be merry.