Music

When the Country Music Association (CMA) announced the Country Music Hall of Fame inductees for 2025 on March 25, event host Vince Gill recalled a moment in the 1990s when producer Tony Brown (George Strait, Reba McEntire) spotted one of his signature songs.
“He’s the one, single-handedly, that talked me into recording ‘Go Rest High on That Mountain,’ ” Gill recalled. “I was not going to record it. It was too personal. It was a little too hard for me to sing. And he heard it, he said, ‘You have to record that song.’ ”

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“Go Rest High” was unconventional as a single. Instead of positive and uptempo, it was slow and reverent; it lasted more than four minutes; and it drew on the deaths of Gill’s brother and Keith Whitley for its memorial character. It peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard country singles chart, breaking Gill’s string of a dozen top five titles. But “Go Rest High” won best country song at the Grammy Awards and song of the year at the CMA Awards, and the hundreds of times Gill has sung it publicly include the funerals for Ralph Stanley, Little Jimmy Dickens and George Jones.

Brown, Gill concluded, “couldn’t have been more right” when he insisted on Gill recording it.

That story pointed to one of the secondary effects of the Hall of Fame. Officially, the inductions recognize people who made a huge impact on country. The music doesn’t exist without them. But those same people don’t rise to legendary levels without the music, either. Or, more specifically, without the songs. With few exceptions, nearly every plaque in the building’s Rotunda — where the announcement was held — can be quickly associated with a signature song. Or two. Or three or five.

Tammy Wynette? “Stand by Your Man.” Alabama? “Mountain Music.” Glen Campbell? “Wichita Lineman,” “Gentle on My Mind,” “Rhinestone Cowboy.” Charley Pride? “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.” Loretta Lynn? “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough.”

“Would we really know even Johnny Cash, if not for the songs?” asks MCA Music Publishing Nashville chairman/CEO Troy Tomlinson. “I can’t imagine we would, right? It’s always the song.”

That reminder was easy to see during the Hall of Fame announcement. Brown has guided a number of signature songs during nearly 50 years as a producer: Brooks & Dunn‘s “Believe,” David Lee Murphy‘s “Dust on the Bottle,” Reba McEntire‘s “Fancy,” George Strait‘s “Blue Clear Sky,” Wynonna‘s “No One Else on Earth” and Steve Earle‘s “Guitar Town,” for example.

But Brown’s fellow 2025 inductees reinforce that thought. Kenny Chesney has built his career on songs such as “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” “I Go Back” and “Don’t Blink,” touching on beach life, nostalgia and life lessons as he has packed stadiums across the country for two decades.

“I just wanted to record and write songs that reflected the lives of a lot of people that came to our shows,” Chesney said. “I just wanted to spread as much positive energy and love as I possibly could.”

Fellow inductee June Carter Cash, meanwhile, was most closely associated on the chart with “Jackson,” a rollicking duet with Johnny, and with “Ring of Fire,” a classic she wrote about the heat she felt for the Man in Black. But even before she married him, June — as a second-generation descendent of the original Carter Family — was already associated with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” the song that provides the theme for the Hall’s Rotunda. 

“That song has ancient origins,” John Carter Cash acknowledged during the March 25 press conference. “But there’s one person who sang that song more than anybody else in her lifetime — or anyone else’s lifetime, for that matter — and that was my mother, June Carter.”

June and Chesney both can trace at least a portion of their success to their connections with two of the oldest publishing houses affiliated with country music. A.P. Carterbuilt the family’s catalog by collecting songs from the mountains that would form the backbone of its repertoire. “Wildwood Flower,” “Keep on the Sunny Side” and “Wabash Cannonball” became some of the earliest — and most enduring — titles associated with the genre. The group’s producer, Ralph Peer, administered the copyrights through his publishing company, now known as peer music, with the royalties he generated setting a template for Nashville’s song-centric music business. The Carters’ songs carry influence not only in country, but also in folk and Americana.

“They are the canon of American music, the foundation,” John said.

Chesney signed his first songwriting contract with Acuff-Rose, the first country publishing firm established in Nashville. Formed by Hall of Famers Roy Acuff and songwriter Fred Rose (“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Kaw-Liga”), the company published songs by the likes of Hank Williams, Don Gibson, Roy Orbison and Boudleaux and Felice Bryant (“Bye Bye Love,” “Rocky Top”).

Tomlinson, who was employed at Acuff-Rose in the early 1990s, believed strongly in Chesney’s talents as a writer, unaware of the onstage reputation that he would eventually build.

“The reason I signed him was the songs,” he recalls. “I was not thinking ‘artist,’ and I’m not sure to what degree he was.”

Writing daily for a company with the legacy of Acuff-Rose helped shape Chesney’s song sense. He routinely frustrated Tomlinson when he would cut seven or eight of his own titles for an album, then drop them in favor of songs from other writers. But through his training, Chesney could identify the good stuff and ended up building long-term success by routinely attracting some of Nashville’s best material.

“If you don’t have a great song,” Brown says, “you don’t have shit.”

Once Chesney, Brown and June have their plaques installed, they’ll join an entire room of people who similarly built their reputations on songs with lasting value. The Nashville Songwriters Association International likes to say that “It all begins with a song,” and the inductees already there attest to that with their signature melodies. 

Kris Kristofferson? “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Dolly Parton? “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” “I Will Always Love You.” Merle Haggard? “Mama Tried,” “Okie From Muskogee.” Willie Nelson? “On the Road Again,” “Crazy.”

As much as the Hall of Fame honors the people, it really recognizes a body of work that reflects the working-class audience who form its consumer base.

“That’s what creates the history,” Gill says. “The artists sing them, but we’re going to pass on and go away. The songs are what’s going to live forever.”