Alan Jackson

Throughout the '90s, mainstream country singer/songwriter Alan Jackson managed a delicate balancing act. If he grew too boring, he'd degenerate into merely another hat act and soon drop off the charts. But if he grew too interesting, he'd lead his audience into expecting him to develop a real personality, and he didn't have the goods to follow up on that promise. So he balanced mild honky-tonk like "Don't Rock the Jukebox" with restrained heart songs like "Someday," and managed to stay atop the charts without growing into a real persona.

It was a profitable niche. When Jackson first hit, country was in another big crossover period -- everybody had, as one Jackson song put it, "Gone Country." That tune, sort of a "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" for yuppies in Stetsons, defined Jackson's response to the music's new fans -- he didn't reach out a hearty handshake like Garth Brooks or glare at 'em from beneath the brim of his hat like Travis Tritt. His voice was personable but hardly distinctive, so he's only as good as the song that's put in front of him -- and, as Greatest Hits shows, he was no bloodhound when it came to sniffing out great tunes. If, as "Chattahoochee" put it, he had learned "a lot about livin' and a little 'bout love," very little of that wisdom translated into his mushier material.

Then two planes hit the World Trade Center and, depending on your perspective, Jackson responded with the best song of his career or the worst of all time, "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)." Drive is the warmest and most consistent album of his career. The title track is Nashville sentimentality at its most irresistible -- first Jackson's dad teaches him to drive, then he teaches his own daughters. As with the best popular culture attuned to the heartland, Jackson creates an everyday world so rich with sentiment that you don't ever want it to stop turning. (KEITH HARRIS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide