“Above and Beyond”
Rodney Crowell
Written by Harlan Howard
Radio & Records
#1 (2 weeks)
August 25 – September 1, 1989
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
September 23, 1989
When “After All This Time” went to No. 1 earlier in 1989, Rodney Crowell became the first artist in history to sing, write, and produce four No. 1 hits from the same country album.
Unsatisfied with one historical marker, Crowell released “Above and Beyond,” a Buck Owens cover, which made Crowell the first artist in history to produce five No. 1 country hits from the same album.
It’s worth noting here that those five No. 1 singles encompass all of Crowell’s No. 1 hits as a singer, but he’d go on to write No. 1 hits for Tim McGraw and Keith Urban. The quality of his material never wavered. Indeed, “Many a Long and Lonesome Highway” and “Things I Wish I’d Said” were every bit as poignant as “After All This Time,” despite not repeating that classic hit’s success on radio and the awards circuit.
So we’re left with talking about “Above and Beyond” as our final coverage of Rodney Crowell as an artist, and that feels a bit anticlimactic. He sings it wonderfully, and the backing band’s performance is as good as Nashville session musicianship gets. It gives a classic hit a modern makeover that smooths out enough of the twangy edges to make it more palatable to late eighties audiences.
But at the end of the day, it’s just a Buck Owens cover. I implore you to listen to the rest of his catalog, including brilliant later singles like “What Kind of Love” and “Earthbound.” A few artists have been clever enough to cover some of his later material, but so much is still waiting to have a shot at country radio through being rediscovered by a current artist. How the late Toby Keith missed “It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long” is a mystery to me. Chris Stapleton, it’s there for the taking!
“Above and Beyond” gets a B+.
Every No. 1 Single of the Eighties
Previous: Keith Whitley, “I Wonder Do You Think of Me” |
Next: Vern Gosdin, “I’m Still Crazy”
You are correct – Crowell continued to issue impressive material over the years. His next album KEYS TO THE HIGHWAY produced two top ten singles (“Many a Long & Lonesome Highway” and “If Looks Could Kill” that went #1 in several markets – the former went to #1 on the Canadian A/C charts) and there were some scattered top ten records over the next few years, but my impression was that after conquering the singles chart, Rodney turned his focus, very successfully, onto making quality albums. I have a bunch of his subsequent albums, including two outstanding collaborations with Emmylou Harris that I pull out frequently. Yes, I love the DIAMONDS AND DIRT album with its five #1 singles but there is so much more to Crowell that I implore listeners to check much deeper into his catalogue