I don’t really show my roots often.
I grew up in a small town of less than 200 people, graduated high school with fewer than 50 kids, got stuck in tractor traffic jams and have family that once opened a corn maze in the field beside their house.
Hidden inside the lifestyle that comes with living in “the sticks” is an entire genre of music that is polarizing. You either love it or hate it.
Nowadays, when I turn on the radio, I hear pseudo-country music. Electric guitars, rock characteristics, nonsense. It’s not country music.
About three years ago, I embarked on a life-changing musical endeavor: listen to as much country music from the 1990s as possible.
Fiddles, steel guitars, acoustic guitars and even the occasional banjo — the way country music was supposed to be. An absolute beautiful chapter in music history. With all of my knowledge about a forgotten era of country, I wanted to start a blog to explore some of the most important songs from the decade.
So here goes nothing.
Rhett Akins (yes, the father of current country artist Thomas Rhett) released a banger in 1995 when “That Ain’t My Truck” hit the airwaves.
The song begins with Akins saying that he and another man had both been dating a woman for a while, but she’s about to cut one off and make her decision. When Akins becomes impatient, he climbs in his truck and drives to his lady’s house, only to be shocked to find another truck parked. The other guy’s truck (a Chevy 4x4, revealed in the second verse) is parked in her drive and Akins is heartbroken.
The song reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot Country charts and continues to be played on various radio stations across the country.
It’s not that the song is iconic or covering an important topic. “That Ain’t My Truck” is just a good representation of what country music was, and probably should be. The guitar, the mullet, the steel guitar, the cowboy hat, everything about Akins and this song defined the 1990s in country music.
The premise of a song about a woman, while including a pickup truck as a signal of heartbreak is country music still to this day.
Akins delivered when it came to “That Ain’t My Truck,” and the song captures everything that is country music from the 1990s.
