The Best Country Albums of 1993

David Cantwell with a big tent take on the year in country music, thirty years ago

In 1993, Hat Acts were dominant on radio, but the split between the mainstream’s so-called Hot New Country sounds and the burgeoning too-loud or too-twangy for radio alternative country field was growing rapidly. Even so, the divide was neither as wide nor as widely identified, let alone as hotly debated, as it would become across the next few years. Shania Twain, for example, released her debut in 1993 but wouldn’t breakthrough to country-rocking superstardom for another year. The pioneering Uncle Tupelo, who were to insurgent and alt-country what Velvet Underground had been to underground and alternative rock, released their final album in 1993, but the principles’ follow-up projects, Son Volt and Wilco, were a year or two off, as was the scene’s magazine of record, No Depression, named in part after Tupelo’s debut.

The creative range of country music on offer in 1993 translated to fresh variety within the genre and a long list of fantastic albums. That was hardly a new development in country circles, understand, but it did once again fly in the face of conventional rock-critic wisdom.

These are my picks for the best country albums of 1993: generous, big-tent version, the way I try to listen and probably the way you do too.

Bottle Rockets - Bottle Rockets

Back in the day it was the anti-racist southern rocker, “Wave that Flag,” and the weepy poverty-kills ballad, “Kerosene,” that made the band’s reputation: Amen. But the Bottle Rockets debut has just got better and better and better through the decades because of its nearly relentless giant twang-punk guitar attack and because of front man (and former Tupelo roadie) Brian Henneman’s good-humored songwriting craft. “Every Kinda Everything” salvages the playful melody to Merle’s not-nearly-playful-enough “I’m a White Boy,” “Bud Nanney’s Theme” is a Buckaroo blast, and “Gas Girl” sounds like a small-town crush—a giddy, breathless diversion going nowhere fast. Call this alt-country or Americana, roots rock or county rock, whatever, but hot damn I’m calling it one of the best country records of my life.

Bobbie Cryner - Bobbie Cryner

Woman on Major Label Makes Great Album that Goes Nowhere, Part 1… A first-rate singer-songwriting country woman who can’t buy a hit? You’ve likely never heard of Bobbie Cryner, let alone her debut, but you know her story all too well. “He Feels Guilty,” where her intensely bluesy vocals evoke John Anderson while sounding like no one but herself, would’ve been my pick for the year’s best country single (if only Martina McBride hadn’t cut “Independence Day”) while Cryner cowrites “Daddy Laid the Blues on Me” (Think “A Girl Named Sue” minus the jokes) and “You Could Steal Me” were nearly as good. All three deserved better than chart peaks in the 60s or 70s, and her delightful duet with big draw Dwight Yoakam on Buck Owens’ “I Don’t Care” didn’t even got released to radio. Treat yourself and track this one down.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore - Spinning around the Sun

Gilmore’s career best finished at #7 in 1993’s Pazz & Jop poll, a much-deserved but nonetheless shocking result from a voting demo not typically inclined to supporting this much whaaang in their twang. Jimmie Dale speed enunciates a la Hank Snow on “Mobile Line,” works his vibrato so hard on Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” that it practically quivers, and on a version of buddy Butch Hancock’s “Just a Wave,” swamps his nasal high-and-lonesome with even lonelier pedal-steel.

Nanci Griffith - Other Voices, Other Rooms

Our in-house Nanci Griffith expert around here is Charles Hughes: If you haven’t already, be sure to check out his Griffith essay from a couple weeks back. But I will say this: Every one of the country/folk songs Griffith sings here have been recorded many, many times before, and yet every Griffith cut here is in the running for best version you’ve ever heard. And, if only in my own case, let’s just say that for as far as her take on Gordon Lightfoot’s “Ten Degrees and Getting Colder” is concerned, you can scratch that “in the running for.”

Maria McKee - You Gotta Sin to Get Saved

Produced by George Drakoulias, covering both Van Morrison and Goffin-King, and backed by the Memphis Horns, Jim Keltner, Benmont Tench, and the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris and Marc Olson (she cuts a nearly naked version of their “Precious Time”), Maria McKee leans into what we’d now call an Americana mash up, fusing her Dolly Parton-meets-Linda Ronstadt vocals and her country-rocking Lone Justice roots to country soul and gospel and Tex-Mex. On the neon-lit-dark-night-of-the-soul title track, she throws herself into an extended, ebullient call-and-response between every wicked thing she shouldn’t do and every damn thing that feels like heaven anyway. If McKee sounds like she’s having this much fun sinning, just imagine salvation! Then, as now, my favorite album of the year.

Del McCoury - A Deeper Shade of Blue

He’d made some fantastic records before it, and has cut even more since, but to my ears, A Deeper Shade of Blue is Del McCoury’s masterpiece. His “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous” is as great as Jerry Lee’s, and more invested in the shame of its lyric; his “True Love Never Dies” races with regret and is bound to lose; his “More Often than Once in a While” is achingly understated. Plus, the band’s on fire throughout, never more so than on “Quicksburg Rendezvous” where Del’s boys Ronnie (on mandolin) and Rob (banjo), plus new McCoury Band fiddler Jason Carter, all take star turns. A++

Ralph Stanley - Saturday Night & Sunday Morning

The decade-long path that transformed Ralph Stanely from longtime bluegrass master to American music icon begins here. Across 31 tracks and two discs (one secular, one gospel, per the album title), and backed all the way by his Clinch Mountain Boys, Ralph provides either gale-force harmonies or humble leads for a who’s who of bluegrass country. The set’s preposterously loaded guest list includes bluegrass-loving country stars (Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless, Dwight Yoakam, Vince Gill), several of his most esteemed progeny (Charlie Waller, Ricky Skaggs, Larry Sparks, Charlie Sizemore), and even genre-founding peers (Curly Ray Cline. Plus Jimmy Martin, people! And BILL MONROE!) I’m especially fond of George Jones joining Ralph for the prison ballad “Wonderful World Outside” and for Stanleys’ signature “Angel Band.” But the highlight of highlights is bluegrass fellow traveler Tom T. Hall singing the tragic “The Water Lily” as Ralph ghosts along on haunted harmony. Gives me what the old timers in my family called the chill bumps.

George Strait - Easy Come, Easy Go

The title track, south-of-the-border styled by cowriter Dean Dillon and perfectly phrased by Strait, topped the charts in October. The album includes three more singles that cracked the Top Ten (two ballads miserable with regret, one giddy-with-love George Jones cover), plus a pair of swell Jim Lauderdale numbers that should have done at least that well. Not quite one of Strait’s masterpieces, but it deserves a spot alongside his several second-tier classics. 

Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne

A fitting swan song from one of the most influential bands of my lifetime. The acoustic openers, Jay Farrar’s “Slate” (“Beauty fades to grey”) and Jeff Tweedy’s “Acuff/Rose” (rhymes with “Name me a song that everybody knows”), foreground the country twang while the electric rockers, Jay’s “Chickamauga” (“Our chronic impending disaster”) and Jeff’s “We’ve Been Had” (as in, “How could I be so in love when I know…”) romp and stomp the twang alternatively. Fellow genre-blurrer Doug Sahm even drops by to duet on one of his own. Anodyne does kind of dribble to an end, but I guess that’s fitting too: a nothing-notable up-tempo one from Tweedy, a hookless downbeat one from Farrar, and they’re gone.

Kelly Willis - Kelly Willis

Woman on Major Nashville Label Makes Great Album that Goes Nowhere, Part 2… Kelly Willis has carved out a career for herself that’s well worth checking out, but she never became the star she should have been. Her third MCA album, produced by Tony Brown with help from Don Was, finds her backed by the country-rocking likes of Richard Bennet, Mike Henderson, Benmont Tench, and Billy Bremmer, among quite a few more liner-note all-stars, and singing her own songs as well as ones by Marshall Crenshaw and Jim Lauderdale. Favorites include her version of the Kendalls’ “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away” and Libby Dwyer’s “Up All Night,” but it’s Willis’ vocals—distinctive, plainspoken, sunny and sad at once—that remain the highlight.

Dwight Yoakam - This Time

Even today, Dwight Yoakam is most often categorized as a Bakersfield revivalist, but This Time finds him in a full-on embrace of Nashville West’s alleged enemy, the Nashville Sound. The fanciful “Pocket of a Clown,” the piano-and-string swaddled elegance of “Ain’t that Lonely Yet,” the hurtling “Fast as You,” the bouncy-and-bluesy title track—there’s not a cut here that doesn’t nod to the early sixties sides of Orbison or Elvis, Brenda Lee or Patsy Cline or Ray Price, albeit with the drums goosed. Timeless.

The best 1993 country albums, honorable mentions

Here’s a dozen more country albums from 1993 that I’d credit as worth a listen, and maybe even several listens. Listed alphabetically again, along with a choice cut or two to get you started…

Garth Brooks – In Pieces (“Ain’t Goin’ Down (‘Til the Sun Comes Up)”)

Brooks & Dunn - Hard Workin’ Man (“She Used to Be Mine,” “Rock My World (Little Country Girl),” “Boot Scootin’ Boogie Club Mix”)

Junior Brown - Guit with It (“Highway Patrol,” “My Wife Thinks You’re Dead”)

Marty Brown - Wild Kentucky Skies (“I’d Rather Fish than Fight”)

Carlene Carter – Little Love Letters (“Every Little Thing”)

Rosanne Cash – The Wheel (“Seventh Avenue,” “The Truth about You”)

Bob Dylan — World Gone Wrong (“Delia”)

Cleve Francis – Walkin’ (“Walkin’,” “One More Last Chance”)

Freakwater - Feels Like the Third Time (“Crazy Man,” “You’ve Never Been This Far Before”)

Wynonna Judd - Tell Me Why (“I Just Drove By”)

Patty Loveless – Only What I Feel (“Nothing but the Wheel,” “Love Builds the Bridges (Pride Builds the Walls)”)

Martina McBride – The Way that I Am (“Independence Day,” “My Baby Loves Me”)

Willie Nelson – Across the Borderline (“American Tune” w/ Paul Simon, “Don’t         Give Up” w/ Sinead O’Connor, “What Was It You Wanted”)

Aaron Neville — The Grand Tour (“Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight,” “The Grand Tour”)

Various Artists — Rig Rock Truck Stop: Another Collection of Diesel Only Records (

Clay Walker – Clay Walker (“Dreaming with My Eyes Open,” “Things I Should         Have Said”) - DC

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