Country Rocks

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Lest there be any lingering doubt, grownups, or at least people over 35, buy more records than teenagers do. They account for 29% of the units sold, compared with 18% for the 15-to-19 age group, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Until last year, the effect of that purchasing power was disguised by the sketchy oral reports drawn from record stores canvassed for the Billboard pop charts. But last year the charts began relying on SoundScan, a firm that compiles computerized bar-code information from cash registers. On the May 25 pop chart, the first based on the SoundScan data, 15 more country albums showed up in the Top 200. In 1984 the country category showed only eight gold (500,000 sales), four platinum (1 million sales) and seven multiplatinum (multimillion sales) albums; last year an astonishing 24 country albums went gold, 21 went platinum, and eight went multiplatinum.

But the story is not just in the sales. Wynonna and Naomi Judd's pay-per- view TV special in January drew more viewers than did similar specials by the Rolling Stones and New Kids on the Block. In a year when the income from the top 10 rock or pop tours declined 32%, country acts increased their revenues 40%. The recently published autobiography of Ralph Emery, Nashville's answer to Johnny Carson, who is the host of Nashville Now, a live show on the Nashville Network (TNN), has been on best-seller lists for 17 weeks. In just two years, the magazine Country America has doubled its circulation to almost 1 million. Even the arbiters of hipness have begun paying attention: both Spin magazine and Michael Ovitz's Creative Artists Agency have new outposts in Nashville. And Saturday Night Live this month featured Brooks as its musical guest.

Above all, country is reaching deeper than ever into the lives of Americans. Since 1980 the number of country radio stations has gone from 1,534 to about 2,500 nationwide. By one measure, country has become the nation's second most popular radio format, after adult contemporary. Country stations rank in first place in 45 of the top 100 radio markets, including Buffalo, Kansas City and Orlando. Without much fanfare, discos that used to play Top 40 tunes have been converting into country music clubs, where cowboy wannabes pull up in Hondas to dance the Slappin' Leather, the Tush Push or the Texas two-step.

But perhaps the most obvious sign that country has achieved a mainstream acceptability is its new and high profile on prime-time television. First came CBS's Country Music Association Awards last October, which unexpectedly landed in the Nielsen Top 10. Then NBC got into the act: it launched a weekly prime- time variety show called Hot Country Nights and in January aired the special This Is Garth Brooks, which helped push the network to its highest Friday-night ratings in more than two years.