Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

Country Music

The TV broadcast of “Opry 100” cut off before the Opry members delivered their last song, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Watch that unseen finale performance below

“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.”

Introduction

After a century of showcasing the world’s greatest country artists, the legendary Grand Ole Opry stage recently hosted a spectacular live “Opry 100” celebration featuring today’s brightest country stars.

The breathtaking lineup included country music royalty: Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, Eric Church, Dierks Bentley, Randy Travis, Ashley McBryde, Carly Pearce, The War & Treaty, Vince Gill, Amy Grant, Clint Black, Trace Adkins, Marty Stuart, Alan Jackson, Post Malone, Alison Krauss & Union Station, Yolanda Adams, Ricky Skaggs, Terri Clark, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Jamey Johnson. What an incredible gathering of talent that left the audience in awe!

The performances highlighted the range of the artists included in the Opry family. One incredible performance was given by Luke Combs. Watch below.

I was absolutely thrilled to see Blake Shelton not only hosting the prestigious Opry 100 Celebration, but also bringing down the house with an amazing rendition of “Pickup Man” live!

The highlight of the evening had to be when Blake joined forces with country legends Trace Adkins and Clint Black for an unforgettable “Party Jam” – a phenomenal mashup featuring some beloved 90s country classics. The crowd went wild as Black delivered his iconic 1998 hit “Nothin’ but the Taillights,” while Adkins had everyone singing along to “(This Ain’t) No Thinkin’ Thing.” You could feel the electricity in the air during this once-in-a-lifetime performance!

What an incredible way to honor 100 years of country music history at the Grand Ole Opry!

The Performance You Missed
The performances mentioned only scratch the surface of the jam-packed country music show that was the Opry 100 celebration.

From a beautiful tribute by Carrie Underwood to Randy Travis to a lively collaboration between Post Malone and Travis Tritt, the night will truly go down in history.

To wrap up the live show, which aired on NBC and Peacock, the 50+ Grand Ole Opry members in attendance all stood on stage to sing a tribute to Dolly Parton, performing her hit song “I Will Always Love You.”

The crowd was led by Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott, and Dave Haywood of Lady A, who Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire joined.

After this performance, the live show did not reveal that the entire group of members who were already on stage stayed for one more performance.

This additional performance could only be viewed by those in attendance at the show.

Country Rebel shared the unseen performance on social media.

The iconic group of country superstars all sang in unison to close out the Opry 100 with the beloved song “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

Per a post on the Grand Ole Opry Instagram, you can now catch the full performance if you stream Opry 100 on Peacock. You can also catch a portion of the performance in the first post below and in the second slide of the second post below.

 

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A 73-YEAR-OLD LEGEND. ONE SONG. THREE GENERATIONS. Last night didn’t feel like a concert. It felt like a living room with 20,000 people breathing together.Bubba Strait walked out first. Calm. Grounded. Then little Harvey followed, boots a bit too big, hands a little tight.The opening notes of “I Cross My Heart” floated in.George Strait didn’t sing. He sat there. Quiet. Seventy-three years of roads and nights, folded into one chair.A son who knows the stories.A grandson who knows the name.Near the end, there was a pause. George looked down and smiled—soft, almost private.Some songs become hits. Others become inheritance.

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HE SANG THAT HE WOULDN’T SURVIVE THE NIGHT… AND FATE WAS LISTENING. Keith Whitley had it all: a voice that was the envy of Nashville, a beautiful wife, and skyrocketing fame. That morning, he kissed his wife goodbye, promising to call when she returned from her tour. It was just an ordinary morning, filled with coffee and plans for a new album. But in the silence of that empty room, the demons of loneliness and alcohol returned to find him. No one knows exactly what transpired during those final hours. The radio continued to play his songs, that sweet voice ringing out across bars everywhere, while the singer himself was slowly fading away on a cold, solitary bed. When his close friend discovered him, the glass still sat on the table, but the warmth of life was gone. There is a strange detail regarding the final song he drafted but never had the chance to record; its lyrics bore a chilling resemblance to the very scene in which he was found…

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THE GUITAR WEPT IN PLACE OF A LEGEND’S FAREWELL. Jerry Reed was never known for fear. He played the guitar like lightning, laughed loudly, and lived at full volume. But beside Chet Atkins’s hospital bed in his final days, people saw a completely different Jerry. “Mister Guitar” — the man who had discovered and mentored him — could no longer press the strings with hands grown too weak. All their lives, they had teased each other, racing to see who could play faster. That day, Jerry lifted the guitar and played a slow, trembling ballad. No flashy technique. No blistering speed. Only the heart of a student saying goodbye to the greatest teacher he had ever known. Chet closed his eyes, listened, and whispered with a smile, “You win, son.” After Chet passed, it was said that Jerry Reed carried part of his own soul with him. One painful story tells that during his first recording session without Chet, Jerry stopped in the middle of a take, stared at the empty chair in the studio, and spoke a single sentence that made the entire crew fall silent and switch off the machines…

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“LIVE AT THE STAR CLUB IS NOT AN ALBUM — IT’S A CRIME SCENE.” — ROLLING STONE. April 5, 1964. Hamburg, Germany. The Star Club was packed, loud, and sweating. Jerry Lee Lewis walked up to that piano like a man with something to prove. And what happened next — nobody in America would hear for decades. He was backed by a band called The Nashville Teens. Here’s the thing. They weren’t from Nashville. And they weren’t teens. But none of that mattered once Lewis hit the first key. The energy that night was something else entirely. Raw. Unhinged. The kind of performance that doesn’t just fill a room — it tears through walls. When Rolling Stone finally reviewed the album, they didn’t call it great. They didn’t call it legendary. They called it a “crime scene.” But here’s what most people don’t know — legal issues kept this record locked away from American listeners for years. Europe had it. The rest of the world didn’t. One night in Hamburg. One piano. And an album that almost disappeared forever.

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Vince Gill has 22 Grammy Awards. Twenty-two. More than any male country artist who ever lived. But ask him which song of his career means the most, and he won’t mention a single trophy. He’ll talk about a funeral. In the mid-’90s, Gill was carrying something heavy. His brother had passed, and a close friend — a young man with a whole life ahead — was gone too soon. Gill sat with that grief for years before he turned it into music. What came out wasn’t a country song in any way people expected. It was a hymn. Barely any drums. Just that Oklahoma tenor reaching so high it felt like the man was trying to hand-deliver the words somewhere past the ceiling. Nashville heard it and didn’t know what to do at first. Country radio wasn’t sure where to put it. But people at funerals knew. Churches knew. Families burying someone they loved too much knew. The song won CMA Song of the Year. George Jones requested it for his own memorial. Vince’s wife Amy Grant — herself a music icon — once said she still can’t hear it without stopping whatever she’s doing. Gill has played this song at hundreds of funerals over the years, sometimes flying across the country just to sing it for a grieving family. He never charges a dime. “If that song can bring somebody five minutes of peace during the worst day of their life,” he told a reporter once, “then it did more than I ever could.” Twenty-two Grammys, and the song that defines Vince Gill is one he wishes he never had a reason to write. Do you know which song that is?

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SHE WROTE THE SONG EVERY WOMAN OVER 30 SECRETLY NEEDED — AND IT WON A GRAMMY. Born on May 15, 1942, in Crossett, Arkansas — a town so small most people have never heard of it — Kay Toinette Oslin spent decades singing in empty rooms, waiting tables, doing Broadway chorus lines nobody remembered. And then something happened. In 1987, at an age when Nashville had already written her off, she released “80’s Ladies.” A song she wrote herself. About real women. Women with stretch marks and heartbreaks and mortgage payments and loud, stubborn joy. Harold Shedd produced it. The album carried the same name. And that song climbed all the way to #7 on the Billboard Country charts. But here’s what nobody expected. It won a Grammy. Not a nomination. A win. The woman Nashville almost never gave a chance to was suddenly standing on that stage, holding that golden gramophone, proving that some voices just need time to ripen. What K.T. said backstage that night — with mascara running down her face — still gives people chills.

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JOHNNY CASH HIRED THEM WITHOUT HEARING THEM SING. THAT’S HOW MUCH COUNTRY MUSIC LOST ITS MIND OVER FOUR BOYS FROM A SMALL TOWN IN VIRGINIA. They were church kids. Gospel quartet. Staunton, Virginia — population nobody cares, nobody leaves. They sang because it was Sunday and that’s what you did. Then one night in 1964 they opened for Johnny Cash. He walked backstage and offered them a spot on his tour. No audition. No demo tape. Just a handshake and eight years on the road together. Nashville didn’t know what to do with them. They weren’t outlaws. Weren’t heartbreakers. Weren’t trying to be cool. Don Reid once told a reporter: “We try not to get involved in anything controversial. We leave the messages to Western Union.” And somehow that was the most radical thing in country music. Eleven CMA Vocal Group of the Year awards. Thirty-two Top Ten hits. A Fourth of July festival in their hometown that drew 100,000 people every summer for twenty-five years straight. They never moved to Nashville. Never wanted to. Lew DeWitt — the one who wrote “Flowers on the Wall” — died of Crohn’s disease at 52, mostly forgotten. Harold Reid died in 2020. The harmonies outlasted the men who made them. Four boys from nowhere. America never got over them.