Trisha Yearwood

Searching for Gary Harrison

September 18, 2010 Guest Contributor 12

Written by Bob Losche (Music & More)

Google “Gary Harrison songwriter” and you won’t find a website or MySpace. There’s not even a Wikipedia article. Don’t know where he’s from, how he got into songwriting or what he likes to eat for dinner.

As far as I know, he has never made an album. When he co-writes a song, does he write the music or the lyrics or a little of both? Don’t know. He’s a Grammy nominated songwriter as co-writer of “Strawberry Wine”, the 1997 CMA Song of the Year, and has penned many BMI Award-Winning Songs. It appears that his first big hit was “Lying in Love with You”, written with Dean Dillon for Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius. The duet went to #2 in 1979.

400 Greatest Singles of the Nineties: #25-#1

August 30, 2010 Kevin John Coyne 32

The top of our list includes a wide range of artists singing a wide range of country music styles. They are all perfectly-written songs delivered with sincerity by the artists who brought them to life.

400 Greatest Singles of the Nineties: #125-#101

August 12, 2010 Kevin John Coyne 24

Johnny Cash may have been too dark for country radio back in 1994, but his morbid single lives on alongside debut singles, seventies covers, and a whole lot of Mary Chapin Carpenter.

400 Greatest Singles of the Nineties: #150-#126

August 9, 2010 Kevin John Coyne 16

Signature hits, breakthrough hits, and why-weren’t-they-hits abound in this entry.

400 Greatest Singles of the Nineties: #175-#151

August 5, 2010 Kevin John Coyne 16

Proving that the airplay charts don’t tell all of the story, this part of the countdown features several singles by nineties stars that didn’t reach the top but have stood the test of time.

Carrie Underwood and Female Country Artists: A Historical Perspective

July 28, 2010 Kevin John Coyne 147

I’ve always been something of a chart junkie. While I don’t pay as close attention as I used to, I still have a pretty good handle on historical trends. One artist I’ve been keeping an eye on is Carrie Underwood. When each official country single from her first two albums peaked at #1 or #2, it caught my attention.

But I never expected the trend to continue, with three more #1 hits from the new album. The source of that belief was the history of women on country radio, especially in the twenty most recent years that were based on actual monitored airplay instead of radio playlists. Since that change, far less records have gone #1 or #2.