Alan Jackson Showcases New Album

GACTV News & Notes

By Tom Roland

When Alan Jackson reeled off bits and pieces of a bunch of his hits in a medley on the American Country Awards, he ended up providing a sort of mini-commercial for his latest album.

Alan was given the inaugural ACAs’ Greatest Hits Award for his body of work, and it dovetailed with the November release of 34 Number Ones, which debuted in the Top 10 of the Billboard Country Albums chart. Alan’s awards medley included some of the most memorable hooks of the last 20 years — “Don’t Rock The Jukebox,” “Remember When,” “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow,” “Drive (For Daddy Gene),” “Chattahoochee” and “Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning).”

There are plenty more songs on 34 Number Ones that country music newcomers might not know, or that longtime fans might have forgotten. “There Goes,” “Dallas,” “Tonight I Climbed The Wall” and “Right On The Money” were all No. 1 singles at some point in time but don’t get the attention anymore that some of Alan’s other titles do. As it turns out, Alan’s challenged by a few of them, too.

“Some of those, [if] somebody asked me to sing ‘em, I couldn’t remember the lyrics to ‘em — even if I wrote it, ’cause some of ’em I don’t sing much anymore,” he laughs. “It’s a lot of stuff, lot of stuff, and then, I mean, that’s just the No. 1s. If you take the Top 5s and the 10s and all that, there’s like 50. I never could remember ‘em all, you know?”

Not knowing all the lyrics to your hits because you have too many — well, that’s definitely a good problem to have. Alan’s certainly not complaining.

Incidentally, the 34 Number Ones project actually includes 37 songs. In addition to Alan’s chart-topping singles, it also features his current single with the Zac Brown Band, “As She’s Walking Away”; a remake of Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire”; and “Look At Me,” a song he recorded for the soundtrack to the 2008 movie Billy: The Early Years.