‘Achy Breaky’ Warms Pop Radio’s Heart

Country singer Garth Brooks may have sold almost 20 million albums in the last three years, broken box-office records around the country and proven a big hit in prime-time TV.

There’s still one measure of mainstream acceptance, however, that has eluded him: a Top 20 pop single.

But he’s not alone.

Pop radio’s resistance to country music is so strong that no country artist has been able to generate enough airplay to register a Top 20 hit since the height of the “Urban Cowboy” craze a dozen years ago.

No one at least until Billy Ray Cyrus.

The 30-year-old, Kentucky-bred singer’s “Achy Breaky Heart” is No. 12 this week on the Billboard magazine pop charts--and we’re not talkin’ watered-down pop-country here. Cyrus’ record is unabashed country, if a bit on the rock side.

The record’s success has pop and country insiders asking the same question: Has country’s growing popularity finally persuaded pop stations to take a chance on the sound?

Maybe.

The pop charts measure both sales and airplay, but Cyrus’ strong chart showing is based almost totally on sales, according to his label, Mercury Records. The company has been able to sell more than 500,000 copies of the single with minimal pop exposure--a figure almost unheard of in country music these days.

But pop program directors are impressed by the sales splurge and a few are beginning to experiment by playing the record.

“In every city I’ve been to in the last couple weeks people have come up to me and said, ‘Man, I heard your song on a goldarn rock ‘n’ roll station,’ ” says Cyrus, a veteran of the country bar-band circuit making his national debut with this song and a new album. “It’s just wild.”

Andy Szulinski, vice president of pop promotion for Mercury, has found pop radio remarkably receptive to “Heart,” and warming to country in general. Officials at many stations told him that listeners were requesting the song before Mercury began marketing it to pop radio.

“It could be opening the door (for country at pop radio),” he says. “There’s obviously a section of the audience that listens to both country and pop. And when country starts crossing over, it can keep doing it for a couple of years.”

So far, nearly three dozen pop stations nationwide are playing the Cyrus single, according to Szulinski. Among them are several major-market powerhouses, including New York’s WPLJ-FM.

Most, however, are still on the fence.

Bill Richards, program director of highly rated KIIS-FM in Los Angeles, is one of those asking questions. He hasn’t played a country record in the 20 months he’s guided the station’s programming, but he’s seriously considering playing this one.

“Country has gotten a lot hipper,” he says. “Many country records now don’t sound so much like country as much as mainstream pop with an edge. To me, ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ sounds like a John Cougar Mellencamp song.”