Big Country

From Dolly and Willie to Toby and Faith, there's music for everyone.

Reinventing Itself

Giant, inflatable girls bob to the beat of "Rock My World (Little Country Girl)," and 14,000 concertgoers in Virginia Beach sway along. They're on their feet for Brooks & Dunn, the celebrated duo known for "turbo-tonk," a souped-up, high-octane version of country music. What really gets the crowd going, though, are the searing guitar riffs that Brooks & Dunn shower like sparks, more reminiscent of The Rolling Stones than Merle Haggard.

Forget the wagon wheels and the hay bales, and that wheezy old-style honky-tonk. Once again, country music is reinventing itself, getting stronger and more varied as it does. Without abandoning its roots -- God and country, hard work and hard times, good women and bad men, and vice versa -- country music has adapted to a younger audience, and is pulling in more diverse fans than ever.

Mostly, country has changed by getting broader, borrowing from rock and pop music, both once taboo in Nashville. Says Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn, "We've never been afraid to say we were influenced by ZZ Top or The Stones, the same way we were by Waylon [Jennings] and Willie [Nelson]."

The new influences are obvious, especially in terms of listeners. More radio stations -- 2,077 -- play country than any other genre. Last year's Country Music Association awards show, televised on CBS, attracted 38 million viewers, beating out "The Bachelor" and "The West Wing." This month's show, scheduled for November 5, is expected to give the competition the boot as well.

Not everyone loves the new sound though. Many fans treasure country's hallmarks -- "real stories sung by real artists who play real instruments," as CMA executive director Ed Benson puts it, referring to the fiddle-banjo-steel-guitar traditionalists. But even those who say the music is too commercial foresee a bright future. They expect yet another change over the next few years, one in which country gets back to its roots, with a sound that's more traditional, and, well, more country again. The late Conway Twitty once said: "When things stop changin', they die." If he's right, country music will live forever.

Who's Hot:
Faith Hill
From her debut in 1994, it was obvious that the stunningly beautiful Hill was not just a country artist. After all, her first album included a Janis Joplin song. But the Star, Miss., native -- who transformed herself from down-home sweetheart to a Hollywood glamour girl -- soon joined Canada's Shania Twain in leading Nashville women toward enormous pop-crossover sales.

Audrey Faith Perry, as she was known in Mississippi (the Hill comes from a brief first marriage), got her real start in life as the adopted week-old daughter of a factory worker and his wife. She grew up singing in church and staying out of trouble. (Her one bad-girl episode: rolling her English teacher's yard with toilet paper.) "I started singing as I started talking, basically," she says. "It really never was a choice for me. It was my way of expressing my feelings. There's this mystery inside of me that for some reason in music, I just explore."

In 1987, at age 19, she moved to Nashville, totally naive about how the music business worked. ("I thought you just walked into this magical little town and eventually you'd end up on the Grand Ole Opry.") She landed a job as a receptionist, keeping her aspirations a secret. A songwriter overheard her singing to the radio one day, and asked her to record a demo. When Hill's boss, singer Gary Morris, heard it, he ordered her to "start getting busy" on her career. She took off.

Citizens of the World

Hill's first single, "Wild One," stayed at No. 1 for four weeks. Since then, her repertoire has grown bolder and less country. In the process, she has alienated some of her early fans, who grouse that she has abandoned them in a quest for exposure and pop-icon status, especially with her 1999 album, Breathe. Whatever the case, Breathe proved to be a brilliant business move -- the album sold more than eight million copies. But her follow-up, the slick, L.A.-sound Cry, was panned by critics and sold less than half that.

Hill has announced that her next album will be country. Right now, though, she's playing opposite Nicole Kidman as a robotic spouse in the spoof remake of the 1975 film The Stepford Wives. All this leaves no doubt that Hill, who has three daughters with her husband, country star Tim McGraw, is intent on having it all. "Yeah, I'm driven," she says. "But I will never lose sight of where I came from [and] the fact that I was once a little girl using a hairbrush for a microphone. It gives me perspective and keeps my head and my heart in the right place."

Toby Keith (and the Dixie Chicks)
When his debut single, "Should've Been a Cowboy," topped the charts in 1993, most people thought of Toby Keith as a mild-mannered youngster. But last year the former oil-field worker and rodeo hand established himself among country's most outspoken artists with "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," a rowdy warning to terrorists.

While the song was an immediate hit, some, including Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines, took offense at the song's most incendiary line: "We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." "It's ignorant, and it makes country music sound ignorant," declared Maines, frontwoman of the crowd-pleasing trio, which has sold 28 million records since 1989.

And so began a public feud between the singers, with Keith retorting, "You've got to be in my league as a songwriter before I'll even respond." In Nashville, where stars rarely criticize each other, this was big news, and it was fueled by Maines's now-famous remark about President George W. Bush. After that, Keith blasted her again. Maines got even on national TV, wearing a shirt with a not-so-subtle message ("F.U.T.K.") that most believe was meant for Keith.

While the two have laid down their swords for the moment, the attacks drew so much publicity that some people questioned whether this was orchestrated anger, not the real thing. No, says Keith, whose "Beer for My Horses," a duet with Willie Nelson, recently climbed to No. 1. "Believe you me, there's nobody that was any madder at her than I was."

Alan Jackson
One of Nashville's last pure traditionalists, Jackson, who's sold 40 million albums in his 13-year recording career, established himself as champion of the "little man," the overlooked and forgotten blue-collar worker. But by writing and recording "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)," his epic reflection on 9/11, he became a citizen of the world.

Born in Newnan, Ga., the youngest of five and the only boy, Jackson slept in a drawer as an infant. He grew up idolizing the hillbilly saint Hank Williams, with whom he shares a love of fancy western clothes. An inveterate prankster (at 9, "I got a scar on my head runnin' through a glass door, going out to the garage to get [an auto] condenser to shock my sisters"), Jackson draws on his childhood in songs such as "Chattahoochee," about the joys of small-town life.

Pushing the Boundaries

He moved to Nashville in 1985, but Music City, then stuck in the Urban Cowboy era of country-pop, wasn't buying his honky-tonk songs with their simple lyrics about cornbread, cars and Dairy Queen dreams. He got his break when his wife, Denise, then a flight attendant, met Glen Campbell, who recommended a music publisher.

Jackson's "Where Were You," included on his top-selling 2002 collection, Drive, earned so many accolades that the singer seems embarrassed by the attention. "I never have liked preachy, save-the-world songs, and I wouldn't want to write another song that influences people like that," he says. "Music to me is more entertainment than a medium for politics."

Shania Twain
On paper Shania Twain looks nothing like a country music superstar. Born Eileen Regina Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, Twain grew up loving show tunes and the Carpenters, and at age 21 toured her honeyed voice on the Canadian resort circuit after the death of her parents left her in charge of her four siblings.

Her first major album (1993's Shania Twain) went largely unnoticed, but that didn't dampen her ambition. Toby Keith remembers Twain telling him, "Country music is just a little pond in a big world, and there's a whole ocean out there." He says, "She wanted her music to be heard everywhere."

She got her wish when she began working with -- and later married -- record producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange, a South African who'd worked with major rock acts including AC/DC, Foreigner and the Cars. Their 1995 collaboration, The Woman in Me, revolutionized country production with its rock 'n' roll instrumentals and dance music beats. Their follow-up, 1997's Come On Over, sold 34 million copies worldwide.

But her most recent album, UP!, has stalled at the 8-million mark -- still huge, but not mega like the past. Twain launches a world tour this fall, hoping to match her 1998-99 road trip, during which she earned $63 million. "I'm basically a bar singer," Twain has said, "who ended up on a concert stage." That's a lot of tips.

Martina McBride
She grew up on a farm in tiny Sharon, Kansas, and began singing for local audiences at age three. But when McBride moved to Nashville in 1990, it wasn't with grand ambitions. It was to sell T-shirts for Garth Brooks, for whom her husband worked as concert engineer. Two years later, when she became Garth's opening act, McBride won over audiences with music that celebrated Midwestern values. "It was all about friends and neighbors," says McBride, "and helping each other out when they need it."

Soon she was pushing the boundaries of country to pop, but without abandoning her core theme -- the connections between us all. "Independence Day," McBride's 1994 hit about domestic violence, became her signature song and earned her a slot on the all-female Lilith Fair tour in 1998. This year's "Concrete Angel," which addresses child abuse, has solidified her status as a champion of the female spirit. Now she gets letters from people thanking her for singing about their lives.

"It's weird for me to take credit for that," says McBride. "You must never underestimate the power of music, but I am just an instrument."

Up and Comers

Carolyn Dawn Johnson
Canadian songwriter Johnson, 30, is the voice of young women searching for self. Her songs carry "a tinge of hope," she says, that "if you keep believing there's light at the end of the tunnel, then it's okay."

Kenny Chesney
Two years ago, 35-year-old Chesney pumped up his body and his show, adding rock-style elements to emerge as the voice of Young Country. "I'm constantly putting myself in the place of the guy and girl out there in the audience, wondering, 'What's it going to take to turn them on, and turn me on, too?' "

Lonestar
They started out playing mainstream country but morphed into an adult-contemporary band with the success of songs like "I'm Already There," about a man who wishes he was home instead of on the road. "My priorities changed when I married and had children," says lead singer Richie McDonald. "I realized what's important."

Keith Urban
A guitar-slinger who moved here in 1992 from Brisbane, Australia, Urban (right) combines sex appeal with universal lyrics, some that chronicle his struggles with drug addiction. "What I love about music," says Urban, 36, "is that it connects people who probably wouldn't have thought they had anything in common."

Rascal Flatts
In June, they made country's first bare-bottomed music video entitled "I Melt." (That's guitarist Joe Don Rooney's derriere.) Now their "tween" generation fans are melting over their fresh harmonies and bouncy love songs. "Parents thank us for doing the music we do," says Rooney, "because they can enjoy it with their kids." (Wonder what they think about the, uh, exposure?)

Where Are They Now?
Reba McEntire
One of country's most fully realized performers, McEntire has sold 48 million CDs, battled monsters in the movies, shot up Broadway in Annie Get Your Gun ("The hardest job I've ever had in my life," she has said), and climbed the bestseller lists. She returns to recording on her first album in four years this November, while co-executive producing her popular WB television comedy, "Reba."

And McEntire insists she doesn't think of herself as a star! "I'm just a twinkle," she says. "I'm working on it."

Willie Nelson
At 70, "The Redheaded Stranger" shows no signs of slowing down. His 2003 duet with Toby Keith hung on to the No. 1 spot for six weeks. His May TV birthday bash, "Live & Kickin'," was one of the most watched concerts in cable history, and he continues to sell out shows. He also actively supports various causes including Farm Aid, an organization he co-founded to give back to rural communities. "I think country stars should get involved with America," Nelson says. "A lot of people call it politics and that's okay. There are times in your life when you have to figure out which side you're on."

Dolly Parton
At 57, the cantilevered singer has so many projects going -- from a new patriotic album to a TV movie in which she plays Mae West -- that she feels young enough to have just started in the business. "Music is my therapist, my love, my job and my joy," she says. But her philanthropic duties, including children's literacy and an American eagle preservation program through her Dollywood Foundation, keep her equally centered -- and modest. Of her CMA nomination for 2003 Female Vocalist of the Year, she says, "I'm just glad to be able to get off the porch, much less to be running with the big dogs."

Want to hear the classic hits of Big Country? Many of the biggest stars and legends -- the late Johnny Cash, Vince Gill, The Judds, Willie and Dolly among them -- are on Country Moods & Memories, a new four-CD box set exclusively from Reader's Digest. To order, call toll free 1-888-RDMUSIC (1-888-736-8742) or visit our secure website at www.rdmusic.com. $59.96, plus shipping and taxes.