![]() ![]() “I just look for a song I like, and when I hear it I know it right away.” “I don’t think there’s anything autobiographical about my material, unless it’s subconsciously,” Strait once said. He isn’t so much a great character as a great narrator, telling a variety of stories instead of returning endlessly to his own. Like Sinatra, Strait is chiefly an interpreter, not a songwriter, and he is committed to the old-fashioned idea that an entertainer’s job is to entertain, and not necessarily to bare his soul. When Strait first emerged, he was acclaimed as “the honky-tonk Frank Sinatra,” a designation that fits him even better now than it did then. Everywhere that there is a country radio station, there are generations of listeners who regard Strait’s music as part of the landscape they are intimately connected to these songs, even if they can’t quite say that they are intimately connected to the man who sings them. Since 1981, when he made his début, he has placed eighty-six singles on Billboard’s Top 10 country chart, and more than half of them have gone to No. He is, by some measures, the most popular country-music singer of all time and, by any measure, the most consistent. “Honey,” he said, “I was just in there, and I didn’t see him.” Strait’s response was not, strictly speaking, a lie. Why would he cut a record in this little place?” She said, “My husband says that George Strait is in there, cutting a record, and I told him that can’t be true. One time, in Key West, where he records, he was sitting outside the studio, naked from the neck up, when a woman accosted him. ![]() In San Antonio, where he lives, he can usually visit restaurants unmolested, so long as he doesn’t smile too widely-he is famous for his smile, which is bright and crooked. George Strait has discovered that when he isn’t wearing a cowboy hat people often don’t realize that he is George Strait. ![]() Photograph by Maxine Helfman for The New Yorker His music sounds like it might have been recorded in 1945 or yesterday – and garnered the exact same larger-than-life response.Strait has always been a singles artist he built his career for maximum longevity, amassing one hit after another. His stripped-down arrangements left room for traditional calling cards like pedal steel and fiddle yet, they were presented with such restraint, and accompanied by such a smooth, warm voice, that the effect was more timeless than retro. His catalog crystallized country’s traditional streak, driving home what’s now an almost universal idea of Real Country Music. 1 songs on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and more than ten multi-platinum albums he has more wins and nominations for CMA and ACM Awards than any other artist he’s been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame (in 2006) and he even headlined the largest-ever indoor concert in North America (in Texas, at Dallas’ AT&T Stadium).īut the numbers are just one measure of Strait’s impact. He holds just about every country record there is, with more than 40 no. The San Antonio-area native has earned his “King of Country” moniker through a remarkable combination of consistency and volume, with 30 studio albums that span just under 40 years. Trying to sum up George Strait’s career in 20 songs is like trying to drive across Texas in a day: you can do it, but will wind up exhausted and having missed all the best parts along the way. ![]()
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