‘Achy Breaky Heart’ – A Look Back

Twenty-Five years ago, the request lines were nonstop with calls for the hottest song in the nation by a young man named Billy Ray Cyrus, here’s my look back as the evening guy on the Hawk.

I was doing a two-hour live show on Fridays nights that aired on 98.1 The Hawk called the Country Club, we would broadcast live from Rick’s Day Hollow Inn.

Since it was the height of the line dancing craze, the show featured a lot of country dance mixes, and I remember my program director coming to me and saying there is this new song that has a line dance with it, and a video that shows how to do it, it’s called Achy Breaky Heart.

The song was hokey and a bit campy. but it had a good beat, so I partnered up with one of our part time girls, and we learned the line dance and demonstrated it on the live broadcast the next week.

The song was an immediate hit, everybody from Grandpa Smith to little Jessica wanted to hear this song, and they were calling the request lines constantly.

I recall at one point we scheduled the song every hour, this continued for days, which felt more like weeks.

Billy Ray Cyrus was all over country and pop radio, according to Wikipedia, the song hit number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the first platinum country single since the early 1980’s.

Many of the country music stars rejected Billy Ray, but the guy was genuine and humble about his new found fame.

The song fizzled out and never really made it to any type of gold status, in fact most country radio stations do not have the song in their regular rotation today.

Many years later his daughter Miley would start her own craze 'Twerking'

If someone asks me the question, what was the biggest song craze in you 30-year radio career, I would say without a doubt ‘Achy Breaky Heart’

[via Wikipedia]