Exploring Clint Black’s decade-long studio album drought
Recording artist Clint Black is doing what he loves best — playing traditional country music with a contemporary edge to fans all over America.
In the three decades since the veteran troubadour’s debut album, Killin’ Time, stormed radio on the strength of “A Better Man”, Black has had 13 songs hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Country charts, with a further 20 singles climbing into the Top 20. Twelve studio albums and 20 million records and counting sold worldwide would be impressive figures for any artist.
Surprisingly, his recording output during the late aughts and early 2010s was overwhelmingly erratic. The critically-acclaimed Drinkin’ Songs and Other Logic, unleashed in October 2005, was Black’s last album of all-new material until On Purpose exactly 10 years later. The Love Songs, featuring intimate, albeit pop arrangements of Black’s romantic ballads, hit store shelves in 2007, but those were strictly re-recordings.
The Long Cool digital EP was released in March 2008 and contained Black’s final two charting songs as of this writing, “The Strong One” and his rockin’ cover of “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress,” a prime nugget from the vastly underrated catalog of the British Invasion harmony-laden outfit the Hollies.
