Strait’s worst records would rate a B- and his best records would typically rate a B+ (there are two or three A’s scattered among his hits). Consequently, Strait never, ever disappoints his fan base.

For much of his reign George has been among the few whose records were recognized as country even by old timers like myself. I buy each new Strait disc as it comes out whereas there are some gaps in my collection of artists such as Rodney Crowell, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Vince Gill, Martina McBride, Faith Hill and others. For those artists I pick up the occasional album and otherwise wait out the Greatest Hit collections.

I have purchased all of Alan Jackson’s albums thus far, but if he issues another turkey like the last album, I may find myself waiting for Greatest Hits V3 before making any further purchases

Your criticism is one of the main reasons I believe that the country chart should include sales, now that we’re in the digital age, as it did up until 1988. It would take some of the power away from radio and more accurately reflect what are the most popular country singles of the day. The top downloads chart isn’t too different from what’s big on radio, but there are a few singles that are selling far better than the current airplay they’re getting, with “Lost”, “Because of You” and “Teardrops on My Guitar” excelling on the download front.

Conversely, the top two radio songs – “Wrapped” and “Lucky Man” – are much further down the sales list.

Radio & Records kept that method for another decade, resulting in many songs topping the R&R charts but not Billboard. Needless to say, in Nashville, the labels decided R&R was what mattered because they could actually influence it. No other major genre took the R&R charts seriously during the nineties because they were inaccurate.

It should be noted that Billboard only printed 51 charts per year so the song that was #1 during week 51 was also listed at #1 for week 52.

This insanity stopped in 1990 as only 24 songs made it to #1 that year. During this period all 18 of George’s #1 records stayed there for just one week. Without the spinning game played at the time some of these songs might have stayed #1 longer, but some of them would not have made it to #1. During this same period Conway had 21 songs reach #1 for one week but he also had four that got there for multiple weeks, only one of which got the week 52 bonus (but it spent 3 weeks at #1 so it was a legitimate multi-week #1)

Prior to 1973 the most #1 singles in a year was 26 in 1972 with most years being in the mid-teens to low 20s in terms of #1 records

The top two artists in terms of weeks at #1 remain Eddy Arnold with 145 total weeks and Webb Pierce with 113 weeks. All 113 of Webbs weeks happened with the space of five years !

This song definitely starts an interesting debate.