There likely isn't a more prominet era in country music than the outlaw country movement. Defined by artists like Steve Earle, Waylon Jennings and more, who turned the genre completely on its end, its influence is still being felt decades later.
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We picked four of our favorite outlaw country anthems that helped define the entire movement.
1. "Copperhead Raod" by Steve Earle
"Copperhead Road" came at the end of the outlaw era, but what a bookend it is for outlaw country. Written by Earle and out in 1988, "Copperhead Road" is told from the perspective of John Lee Pettimore III, part of a lineage of moonshiners in East Tennessee. Copperhead Road does actually exist in East Tennesssee.
Interestingly, Earle never planned on it even being a country hit, much less a pivotal song for the outlaw country movement. The song is the title track of Earle's third studio album
"I just was trying to get on rock radio while still staying true to who I was," Earle tells Guitar Player. "I didn't think rock radio was any better than country radio, but there were people at my own record label who had decided that my career was not going to survive. ... So I decided I was going to make a rock and roll record on purpose."
2. "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" by Waylon Jennings
If there's an artist who defines the outlaw movement, it's likely Waylon Jennings. And if there's a song that defines the movement, it's probably Jennings' "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way." Written by Jennings and released in 1975, the song was inspired by Jennings' frustration at the direction country music was going. Jennings references the legendary Hank Williams in the song.
Later, in his autobiography, Jennings shared more about the song.
"We wanted to be like him," he writes (via Rolling Stone). "Romanticizing his faults, fantasizing ourselves lying in a hotel room sick and going out to sing, racked with pain, a wild man running loose even if it meant dying in a blue Cadillac on the way to greet the new year in Canton, Ohio."
3. "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by The Charlie Daniels Band
There's likely not a more iconic song in outlaw country than "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Co-written by Daniels, the 1979 song is about a young fiddle player named Johnny, who is challenged by the devil to a fiddle contest. Daniels himself plays the fiddle in the song.
Daniels recalls realizing there wasn't a fiddle song on his Million Mile Reflections record. In true Daniels' form, he decided to write one.
"We went out and we took a couple of days' break from the recording studio, went into a rehearsal studio and I just had this idea: 'The devil went down to Georgia," Daniels tells Songfacts. "The idea may have come from an old poem that Stephen Vincent Benet wrote many, many years ago. He didn't use that line, but I just started, and the band started playing, and first thing you know we had it down."
4. "Whiskey River" by Willie Nelson
Johnny Bush and Paul Stroud wrote "Whiskey River." The song was a hit for Bush in 1972, before Nelson released it on his own six years later. The song, about a man who drowns his sorrows in whiskey to forget his lost love, resonated with Nelson. Almost 50 years later, it's still a mainstay in his shows.
Nelson liked the song so much, he also sang it with The Highwaymen, a supergroup of that included him, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and Jennings. And according to Nelson, "Whiskey River" will always be the best song Bush ever wrote.
"He has been exceedingly wealthy ever since," Nelson says in the foreword for Bush's book, Whiskey River (Take My Mind): The True Story of Texas Honky-Tonk. "He doesn't need to sing any more or write books."
