Top 40 Singles of 2008: Randy Houser - "Anything Goes" (#6)

Emotional songs about relationships and life are the lifeblood of country music and with this song, Randy Houser was able to make a smashing debut on the charts.  The song broke through enough to make it one of 2008's best Country singles released.

The music business doesn’t continue to grow and change if new talent isn’t introduced into it and country music harvested quite a talented crop in 2008.  One of the most talented newcomers was Randy Houser.  With this single, only one of two songs not written by him on his debut album (also titled “Anything Goes”), Houser was able to show off his vocal talent in a way that few new artists can.

The Mississippi songwriter, known for co-writing silly hits like "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" and “Back That Thing Up,” gets serious on his debut single, a tune which finds Houser in a bar singing about how nothing really matters all that much anymore because his cherished relationship has just ended.  The vocals on the track sound quite a bit like Ronnie Dunn of Brooks & Dunn while the melody is driven by soft piano-driven acoustic instrumentation.  The song fared well enough that it spurred an invitation to the David Letterman Show -- seldom the result of early success from your first country single.

Houser sings the track with so much emotion that anyone, Country music fan or not, who has ever been on the wrong side of a break-up can relate to it.   All of these factors described above made the single memorable enough to place it at Number Six on our year-end “Top 40 Country Singles of 2008” countdown.

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