They don’t make ’em like that anymore.
I’m not just talking about Dale Earnhardt either. Of course the NASCAR legend is irreplaceable, and the sport just hasn’t been the same since the Intimidator was killed on the last lap of the Daytona 500 back in 2001.
But music videos just aren’t the same these days either.
Of course nobody really watches music videos these days anymore anyway. I get an email at least once a week pitching me some artist’s latest music video, and usually just send them straight to the trash, because nobody really cares about music videos. Does CMT even show them anymore? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.
But anyway, let’s go back to a time when music videos were at their best. Back in the ’90s, when Alan Jackson was water skiing in jeans on the Chattahoochee and Tracy Byrd was doing the Watermelon Crawl all over Georgia.
It was the best.
Maybe the finest country music video of the ’90s, though, is this piece of cinema starring the legendary Dale Earnhardt alongside Brooks & Dunn for their 1997 hit “Honky Tonk Truth.”
Dale was good friends with Kix and Ronnie, and Brooks even got mistaken for Earnhardt while walking through the NASCAR garage during a race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (You’ve gotta admit, the resemblance is pretty uncanny).
And when they told Earnhardt the story, they later were able to convince him to join them for their upcoming music video – after promising to take out any scenes that he didn’t like.
But as Ronnie says, asking Dale to star in the video was a nerve-wracking experience:
“Pretty scary. He was The Intimidator in more ways than one.”
The video was recorded at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and the result was maybe one of the greatest pieces of American cinema ever created – and undoubtedly one of the greatest country music videos of the ’90s, and maybe ever.
