Best Old Country Music Mix Download PORTABLE

But seriously: country music isn't all pickups, whiskey, fights, American flags and men wearing extremely big hats. Sure, some of it is, but at its core, country's all about overcoming hardship, familial pride and heartbreak. Those values span the legacy of the genre, from Hank Williams to Willie Nelson to Dolly Parton and all the way up to Lil Nas X's breakout and Orville Peck's alt-country anthems. There's pop country and disco country, traditional country and outlaw country. But at its heart, all country is intertwined.

Take a journey through the decades with Holler's list of 100 of the most popular country songs of all time - hits that have been crossover sensations, covered hundreds of times, or that were, quite simply standalone bangers.

Best Old Country Music Mix Download

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What makes a great country song? It tells a story. It draws a line. It has a twang you can feel down to the soles of your feet. Some get mad, some get weepy, some just get you down the road. But these are 100 essential songs that map out the story of country music, from Hank Williams howling at the moon to George Jones pouring one out for all the desperate lovers to Taylor Swift singing the suburban cowgirl blues.

One of Bruce Springsteen's lesser-known influences is the late, hard-drinkin' Texas fiddle player Harry Choates. After playing for spare change as a teenager in the Thirties, Choates started making records by his early Twenties, and his aching 1946 reworking of the so-called "Cajun National Anthem" hit Number Four on the Billboard charts. "Jole Blon," a traditional cajun waltz with nearly indiscernible lyrics about a pretty blonde, rode commercial success via several reinterpretations and continued in country lore throughout the decade. It passed through the hands of Roy Acuff, Warren Zevon, Springsteen (who recorded an early-Eighties version with Gary U.S. Bonds) among many others. Fame and fortune never made it back to Choates, however. According to legend, he sold "Jole Blon" for $100 and a bottle of whiskey and died at the age of 28. By Reed Fischer

This loving, jargon-filled novelty song took the insular world of trucker culture to the tops of both the country and pop charts in 1976. "Convoy," an ode to C.B. radio, gave Iowa singer C.W. McCall the only Number One hit of his career, sold two million copies, started a C.B. radio fad and even spawned a successful action movie of the same name. "The truckers were forming things called convoys and they were talking to each other on C.B. radios," explained McCall, who co-wrote the song with Chip Davis. "They had a wonderful jargon. Chip and I bought ourselves a C.B. radio and went out to hear them talk." That's a 10-4, good buddy. By Jonathan Bernstein

These irresistibly slick opportunists always had a keen eye for cultural shifts: "If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me" treated country's late-Seventies transition from the honky-tonk to the singles' bar as a forgone conclusion and 1987's "Country Rap" is pretty self-explanatory. "Old Hippie" is the Brothers' astute take on how onetime counterculture rebels, alienated by disco and new wave, turned to country music in the Eighties with an age-worn weariness: "He ain't tryin' to change nobody/He's just tryin' real hard to adjust." Ten years later, "Old Hippie (The Sequel)" brought us into the Clinton era, and in 2007, on "Old Hippie III (Saved)," our hero was born again. Meanwhile, contemporary country is providing a similar escape for many aging Nineties rock fans. Who's going to write "Old Slacker"? By Keith Harris

Yoakam is often painted as a critic of Nashville, but in "Guitars, Cadillacs" the hillbilly music that Tennessee once produced becomes the only thing that makes Tinsel Town tolerable for this "naive fool who came to Babylon and found out that the pie don't taste so sweet." Of course, despite his posturing, L.A. was the perfect place for the Ohio transplant. A home for country rock since the Byrds and the Burrito Brothers, the ambitious singer found his match in local roots-oriented post-punk acts like the Blasters, Lone Justice and the Knitters. The biggest influence on "Guitars, Cadillacs," however, the one who lent the song its crisp guitar and walking bassline, remained two hours north. His name was Buck Owens, and two years later Yoakam would give him his 21st chart-topper with "Streets of Bakersfield." By Nick Murray

Triumphant, hopeful and as corny as Kansas in August, North Carolina native Donna Fargo took this self-composed paean to young newlywed bliss to the top of the country charts. There's no tortured dark-end-of-the-street sentiments for Fargo, who seems to mean every last "skippidy do da." All that honky-tonk ne'er-do-well stuff about drinkin' and cheatin' and carryin' on? That's for middle age. For the two-and-a-half minutes that this lovers' anthem lasts, it can wait. By David Menconi

After failed attempts at R&B, country pastures were far greener for Osbie Burnett McClinton. Once the Mississippi native became the "Chocolate Cowboy" in the early Seventies, he rolled out a string of charting country hits featuring his rich baritone voice, able backup singers and a wry sense of humor. ("The Other One" corrected anyone mistaking him for Charley Pride.) McClinton's biggest song, off 1972's Obie From Senatobie (via Stax subsidiary Enterprise) was a twangier remake of R&B hit "Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You," which notched Number 37 on the country charts. Originally an early Wilson Pickett single, the perspective of an about-to-be-jilted lover trying to spark that old flame resonates in any genre. By Reed Fischer

This tragic tale of a man who gave up his entire life to make his woman happy in Baltimore (and who gets subsequently dumped there) was originally recorded by Bobby Bare, a singer most famous for working with a young Kris Kristofferson. But, as Bare told Rolling Stone in 1980, "Most of my hits would have been hits for anybody, I just got to 'em first." So it was with "Streets of Baltimore," penned by Tompall & the Glaser Brothers, who wanted to release the single themselves in September of 1966. Unfortunately for them, Bare got to it first (in June) and scored a hit, reaching the Number Seven spot on the country charts. The joke ended up being on Bare, though: For many, Gram Parsons' 1973 version is widely considered the song's most essential incarnation. By Cady Drell

Inspired by a girl who "could party and rock harder than anyone I'd known," John Scott Sherrill wrote this song while separating from his wife. The first country chart-topper for both singer John Anderson and Sherrill, "Wild and Blue" is a hauntingly beautiful account of a cheating woman, told from the POV of her cuckolded man. Anderson's syrupy drawl and mournful wail is intensified by sister Donna's Hill Country harmonizing. Lloyd Green's pedal steel and twin fiddles paint a long, bleak evening of waiting for honey to come home, but in the end the singer's resigned forgiveness is hardly cause for celebration. Big-voiced Sally Timms gave Anderson's 1982 hit a straight, strong reading when British country-punks the Mekons covered it on 1991's Curse of the Mekons. By Richard Gehr

Charlie Rich had been struggling to find a niche between his rocking, jazz-picker roots and the Music Row mainstream for two decades. Then "Behind Closed Doors" gave the so-called Silver Fox the biggest hit of his career. "The jocks had been complaining that [Rich] was too bluesy for country," producer Billy Sherill explained to Billboard in September of 1974. "Others said he was too country for anything else. We just needed the right song." To create that right song, Sherill and Co. started with a riff that writer Kevin O'Dell had been humming for years, and then balanced traditional country flourishes with the dramatic orchestral instrumentation of an 11-piece string section. Rich won two Grammys and his only CMA Entertainer of the Year award. By Marissa R. Moss

After recording a pair of acoustic blues albums for Folkways, Lucinda Williams found her rightful audience with her eponymous 1988 Rough Trade debut. It contained this hoarse-voiced pop-rock anthem about not only wanting but deserving a comfortable bed, bath, and emotional beyond. Williams was broke and turning 40 when Mary Chapin Carpenter softened the song's edges, added a stirring guitar arrangement and took "Passionate Kisses" close to the top of the Billboard country chart in 1993, winning Grammys for both herself and its author. By Richard Gehr

Born into a Cajun farming family in Erath, Louisiana, in 1932, Doris Leon Menard based this regional hit on "Honky Tonk Blues" by Hank Williams, to whom he always bore a musical resemblance. Written during his shift at a service station, and recorded with Elias Badeaux and the Louisiana Aces, Menard's catchy two-step satirizes a Cajun stereotype, the hard-drinking spendthrift whose late-night escapades lead to an early-morning return through the back door (and ultimately prison). "La Porte d'en Arrire" sold out its initial 300-copy run within days, then sold half a million more while becoming Cajun music's most frequently covered song not titled "Jole Blon." Although Menard soon "came to where I couldn't bear to even hear the name of that song, I got so tired of it," he still manages to perform "La Porte" to this day. By Richard Gehr

In the two decades Lee Ann Womack has been making music, she's never made a splash like the one she made with this 2000 song. It charted at Number One on both the country and adult contemporary charts, won "Song of the Year" at the CMAs, ACMs, ASCAP awards and took home a Grammy for "Best Country Song." Plus, between the years of 2000 and 2007, you couldn't throw a rock at a high school graduation without hitting it. But according to the song's co-writer Tia Sillers, it was actually less about how the children are our future and more about her rough divorce. Still inspirational, just more depressing. By Cady Drell e24fc04721