Alabama — “The Closer You Get”

Entered Top 40:  June 4, 1983
3 weeks 
Peaked at: 38

One of my expectations about The Bottom Five project was that a lot of these songs might have been high-ranking hits on genre charts — R&B, Disco, AC, Country, Hard Rock — that just barely crossed over into the mainstream. And that’s often been the case, and it is with Alabama’s “The Closer You Get.” The astounding thing to me, though, is how few Top 40 crossover hits Alabama actually had, relative to their wild Country success. Alabama had 33 #1 Country songs in the US, the most by any group (a handful of solo artists have more), but they only landed six songs in the Top 40. I am currently reading Kelefa Sanne’s Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. I haven’t gotten to the Country chapter yet, but Alabama doesn’t even seem to get a mention. The book’s index goes from “Akon” to “Albini, Steve.”

I’m not exactly lamenting the dearth of Alabama for me to cover, mind you. Their stuff is…not for me. As some homework, I listened to a compilation of “20 #1 hits” (which was a lie in fact…one of the tracks peaked at #2) that didn’t even include “The Closer You Get.” Good lord, so much corn. I thought one song was sort of amusing, though; “Reckless” from 1993 sounded like if a good ol’ boy tried to recall from memory a Springsteen song he’d heard while visiting the black-sheep Yankee side of the family for Thanksgiving.

Anyway, Alabama did have a little cluster of crossover success in the early ’80s, where they placed four songs in the Top 40 from 1981-83. “Love in the First Degree” was the most successful (#15); “The Closer You Get” was the last. It was also a cover, originally by our old friends Exile in 1980, and other old friend Rita Coolidge took a whack at a version in 1981.

And then Alabama wouldn’t see the Top 40 for another 16 years. They resurface in 1999 when they cover NSYNC’s “God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You,” with the boy band singing backup. The Country chart-toppers would continue, though. Alabama had 21 straight #1 Country songs from 1980 to 1987. The streak-buster, “Tar Top,” *only* went to #7. And then they rattled off another six in a row. The last #1 before the first breakup was “Reckless,” that faux-Bruce song, in 1993. The last to date was a song with Brad Paisley in 2011.

We aren’t going to see another Country song in the Bottom Five until near the end of the ’80s, either. Billboard will adjust its chart-tallying alchemy to give MTV airplay a little more credence soon, and Country will feel the squeeze. Things will start to open up a bit when Billboard switches to SoundScan to track sales in 1991. We’ll start to see a lot of county artists in the Bottom Five near the end of the ’90s.