Country at Pop Border Crossroad

If the recording executives and artists at tonight’s Country Music Assn. Awards ceremony seem unusually upbeat, it might be due to what’s happening on radio.

With country records receiving unprecedented airplay on pop radio, industry leaders are hoping for yet another boom in the sales of country albums.

The reasoning goes like this: If country music accounts for 14% of all U.S. album sales while limited to airplay on one radio format, how big might the future be if the music begins reaching the larger audience afforded to pop singers, most of whom enjoy radio play on a variety of formats?

“This does feel like a breakthrough,” says Luke Lewis, head of the country division of Mercury Records, home of Shania Twain. “It reminds me of the early ‘80s, when Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ broke down barriers for black musicians on MTV and on pop radio. Now that pop radio has seen how listeners respond to LeAnn [Rimes] and Shania, they’re ready to try more of it.”

So far, the benefits have been great for both camps: Those artists getting pop radio play--Twain, Rimes, Faith Hill and others--have seen their sales skyrocket as a result; meanwhile, radio stations are finding that airing selected country songs is livening up their playlists and increasing their listener base.

“Top 40 has always been the best of all genres,” says John Ivey, program director of Boston’s leading pop station, WSKS-FM. “We should play whatever the best available records are. I think all of the [country] songs we’re talking about are great songs. To me, they all sound pop, and they’ve been big records for us.”

Lon Helton, country music editor of the trade magazine Radio & Records, says there have been at least eight hits in recent months that began on the country charts and then crossed over to stations with an “adult contemporary” (or easy listening) format. Three of those songs--Twain’s “You’re Still the One,” Rimes’ “How Do I Love” and Hill’s “This Kiss”--have gained widespread success at the larger, “contemporary hit”--or traditional Top 40--format.

There are about 2,500 stations in the U.S. that feature country music, but some major urban markets, including Boston and New York, don’t have one. By contrast, more than 4,000 stations play pop music, including stations in every major city.

“There’s more crossover music coming out of country right now than at any time in the past,” Helton says. “I don’t remember it ever being this massive--not even in the ‘Urban Cowboy’ days. To have so much happen in such a brief period of time really is unprecedented.”

So far, most of the pop radio play has gone to female country singers, and to records with a distinctly pop edge to their sound. The feeling is that country’s male stars are more identified with rural Southern culture. “I’m not sure pop listeners are ready to have people with cowboy hats on their format,” says Chris Stacey, senior director of national promotion of Mercury Records.

But Arista Records is ready to test that theory. Alan Jackson, Arista’s best-selling country star, has begun getting airplay on adult-contemporary stations with his new single, “I’ll Go on Loving You.” The song includes a spoken recitation, upfront steel guitar licks, and Jackson’s undeniable Georgia drawl.

Arista Records president and chief executive Clive Davis is personally spearheading the effort to get the romantic ballad played on adult-contemporary radio, says Jackson’s manager, Chip Peay.

“Alan is and always will be country,” Peay says. “His whole life is based in traditional country music and all that it stands for. . . . But this is a song that has universal appeal, and I don’t think we’re doing anything other than providing more people the opportunity to hear a great song and a great performance.”

Should “I’ll Go on Loving You” succeed, then the borders between country and pop radio truly will be open, optimistic insiders here believe. “If Alan Jackson has a pop hit, then it’s look out below,” says Helton of Radio & Records. “If a guy like Alan has a bona fide pop hit, it would go along way in loosening up a lot of prejudices.”

Amazingly, this whole movement happened through a fluke.

Rimes originally recorded “How Do I Live,” a song written by top pop songwriter Diane Warren, for the movie “Con Air.” However, movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer rejected that version, reportedly telling Curb Records President Mike Curb that the recording was “too country.”

Bruckheimer tapped country singer Trisha Yearwood to cut the song with another producer. With saxophones replacing steel guitars, Yearwood’s version appeared on the soundtrack. Curb refused to withhold Rimes’ version, however, even when country radio chose to play Yearwood’s take instead.

Curb tested the song with pop radio, and the results were positive. Now, more than 15 months after he first sent “How Do I Live” to pop radio, Rimes’ record has become the longest-running Top 40 single of all time, logging 67 consecutive weeks on the chart. The single also has sold more than 3 million copies.

Warren and Rimes a Hit Combination

WSKS-FM in Boston was among the first stations to give the song a chance. Program director John Ivey says the combination of a Warren song and Rimes’ youthful appeal convinced him to give the song a try.

“I wanted to play it because it sounded like a hit record to me,” says Ivey, “and it turned out to be a huge record for us. To me, that was a real eye-opener.”

With Rimes gaining such strong support from pop radio listeners, station programmers were primed to try it again. That’s when Shania Twain, country music’s top record seller of the last three years, stepped forward.

“When Mercury approached us with Shania and ‘You’re Still the One,’ I was open to the idea,” Ivey says. “I thought it sounded like a great pop record.”

The last time pop radio blended country songs into its playlists was in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when hits by Eddie Rabbitt, Kenny Rogers, Crystal Gayle and Willie Nelson were aired in sequence with popular records by the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt and Boston.

However, beginning in the mid-’80s, pop radio took on a harder-edged sound. As the pop format turned toward rap and hard rock, country songs no longer fit into the format. But the recent rise of melodic hit songs by the Wallflowers, Jewel and Hootie & the Blowfish, as well as Nashville’s new emphasis on youthful performers, has brought the sounds of country and pop closer together again.

“It’s easy for radio to play LeAnn Rimes after Celine Dion, or Shania Twain after Mariah Carey,” says Curb. “It fits.”

What’s different about the current crossover movement is that it’s not meeting resistance from country radio programmers. In the late ‘70s, Dolly Parton, Nelson and others were penalized by country radio for cross-marketing songs to different formats. So far, country radio continues to embrace Twain, Rimes, Hill and the others.

“It’s been 180 degrees different from how they reacted during the ‘Urban Cowboy’ era,” says Radio & Records’ Helton, who talks daily to country radio programmers nationwide. “Twenty years ago, the stations were real upset about it. Now they see it as a commercial for their station and for country music.”

“Country radio has been losing listeners in the last couple of years,” Lewis of Mercury Records says. “For Shania to fulfill her promise, it’s our duty to take her out and expose her to as many people as we possibly can. We’re doing that. But, for country radio, what we’re doing is grabbing people with good music and bringing them back.”

Meanwhile, many Nashville executives are salivating at the possibility of seeing more of their records played on more than one radio format. “It’s always been about access,” says Jim Ed Norman of Warner Bros. Records.

“A singer like Faith Hill has all the qualities and meets all qualifications that would be expected to make it in the pop marketplace,” he says. “All it takes is for the programmers to have the openness it takes to give a singer like Faith Hill or Shania Twain a chance. Give them a chance, give them that exposure, and they’re going to be embraced.”