49. Phil Vassar — If you sing a song about drinking beer in the summer, you qualify as an accomplished country artist. But unlike most drinking singers, Phil only drank six-packs of his favorite frosty brews in “Six-Pack Summer.” He’s the Ryan Glanzer of country singing drinkers—he knows to cut it off before he gets too sick.
48. Rascal Flatts — Patrick once referred to the ultra-popular country group as Rascal Gay. Clever, I know. But while their music appears to be targeting females and non-manly men, RF has managed to draw a pretty wide audience with songs about girls fighting cancer.
47. Willie Nelson — Willie stood me up at WeFest last year, inexplicably not showing the final show with Toby Keith. Okay, it turned out he was on his deathbed, but still. Respected as he is in the industry, I only know of a few Willie tunes, including his ever-famous “On the Road Again.”
46. Neal McCoy — Neal was the Seinfeld of country singers, naming his songs simple titles like “The Shake” and “The Wink,” much like “The Junior Mint” or “The Soup Nazi” or, hey, “The Wink.” Short, and to the point. I was always secretly disappointed that in “The Shake,” he mentioned Bismarck, North Dakota, when I thought Huron, South Dakota would have fit better.
45. Collin Raye — Few could make grown men shed tears like Collin, weeping about a note his grandpa wrote for his grandma back in 1923. Okay, I also was a big fan of that heart-wrenching song, which I think “The Notebook” got its story from.
44. Bucky Covington — What has former Idol contestant Bucky got that Carrie doesn’t besides a penis? Some really awesome songs, that’s what! Like “It’s Good to Be Us.” Bucky may have been born to a mother who smoked and drank, but he turned out okay.
43. Bryan White — Look at iTunes on my laptop, and you’ll see Bryan White’s “Somebody Else’s Star” is the most-played song. Do not let that fool you. I accidentally went to sleep with that song on repeat and it played precisely 134 times while I slept.
42. Charlie Daniels Band — When Charlie played the fiddle against the devil in Georgia, he may have won and out-played the devil, but the devil cursed him with a neck bulging very uncomfortably out of his tight flannel shirts. Charlie may be my biggest competition for gross sweat per minute.
41. Joe Nichols — Joe and his woman problems. First he runs into a devil driving a Coupe de Ville down in Brokenheartsville, then his wife drinks too much tequila, listens to Bon Jovi (“Livin’ on a Prayer,” not “Make a Memory”) and takes off her clothes in public.
40. Lonestar — Lonestar crossed the daunting line between country and pop with 2000’s mega hit “Amazed.” What I was so amazed with was how popular the song was. Yeah, it was alright, but I still thought “No News” was their best work.
39. Gary Allan — Last year at WeFest, the doctor from Florida who I rode to Detroit Lakes with wanted nothing more than to sleep with Gary Allan. When I got back from the concert, she was in a tent with Steve passed out on top of her. Steve 1, Gary Allan 0.
38. Trace Adkins — All badonkadonks aside, Trace puts on a pretty good show. I should know, I’ve seen him twice now! Some of his older stuff like “Every Light in the House Is On” is arguably listenable to even the Marcie Glanzers of the world.
37. Joe Diffie — Long before Case IH tractors were sung about by Craig Morgan, Joe was out preaching the word of John Deere, at least the color John Deere green anyway. From colors of tractors to aliens landing at the mall (“Third Rock from the Sun”) Joe had all topics covered.
36. Alan Jackson — All due respect, Dorrie, but Alan is mostly just okay to me. I’m still not sure what he was thinking when he agreed to sing “Chatahoochee” at the first ever ESPY awards, when his mic didn’t work and all you could hear were his backup singers.
35. Kenny Rogers — Not only did Kenny pitch a perfect game for the Rangers in 1994 vs. the Angels, but he also sings some mean country. Much like his perfect outing, he just knows when to hold and fold ’em. He still can get it done today, with jams like “Can’t Unlove You.”
34. Hank Williams, Jr. — Thank God he’s a country boy and thank God for ABC keeping his career alive for all those years with custom Monday Night Football songs each week.
33. Montgomery Gentry — So they shoot caged bears in northern Minnesota, big deal. They made up for it by mentioning the Vikings in their 2007 hit “Lucky Man.” I later heard a version of the song where they replaced the Vikings with the Packers. Maybe there was a different version for each market? Smart!
32. Tracy Byrd — Though no relation to baseball player Marlon Byrd, Tracy stunned the country world with the 90s most popular slow song, “Keeper of the Stars.” He later decided to drink wine made from ripe watermelons and do a dance based on them.
31. Restless Heart — They really are restless. Ten years after they fizzled with their last real album, they attempted a comeback and one of their songs reached #29 on the charts. But in all fairness, they had some of the best slow songs of the late 80s and early 90s!
30. Clint Black — I never realized what an odd name Clint is until I started looking at Clint Black’s name. Dusty used to have a Clint Black tape and our favorite song was “When My Ship Comes In.” It dealt with Clint’s ship coming in.
29. Johnny Cash — Seeing Walk the Line really opened my ears to Johnny’s style. Not coincidentally, “Walk the Line” is my favorite song of his as well. Especially when it played at the beginning of the movie and all the jailbirds were stomping and clapping, shaking the prison, waiting for Johnny to take stage.
28. Josh Gracin — Seriously, Idol contestants. You want to hit it big someday? If you crack the top 12, just start singing country. Gracin made it big. So did Carrie, Bucky, Kellie, etc. I saw Josh Gracin in concert for free in 2006 in Minneapolis with Geiszler, who can agree we were idiots that night.
27. Little Texas — Being Little Texas is still waaay bigger than being a Little Big Town. If you’ve never seen the 90s haircuts of the Little Texas singers, check it out. It was worse than the 80s.
26. Dwight Yoakam — If you hate country music, no doubt you will hate Dwight Yoakam, the voice that defines the term “twang.” Personally, I used to hate him, but I’ve learned to accept, and even like some of his songs.
Ryan Glanzer Blog 
I agree, “Love, Me” can make even the most stoic people cry. You might be interested in knowing that Collin Raye and Jim Brickman are doing a tribute concert October 11.
The concert will be webcast for free. Pre-Registration is required.
More details and registration at: http://operationkids.org/register
Chris LeDoux, the richly gifted Contemporary Country artist has released him current album titled Right after The Storm and Wow! It can be genuinely a useful 1.