Contemporary Country

Contemporary Country is a 22-volume series issued by Time-Life during the early 1990s, spotlighting country music of the 1970s through mid 1990s.

Each volume in the series chronicled a specific time period – the early-1970s, the mid-1970s, the late-1970s, the early-1980s, the mid-1980s, the late-1980s, the early-1990s and the mid-1990s. Each volume was issued on a compact disc or cassette. Individual volumes contained 22 tracks, and represented the highlighted time period's most popular and noteworthy tracks. Also included was a booklet, containing liner notes written by some of the most respected historians of the genre, photographs of the artists, and information on the songs (writers, performers and peak position on Billboard magazine's country charts).

All told, the entire series contains 484 tracks.

History

"Contemporary Country" was first issued during the summer of 1991, and essentially picked up where Time-Life Music left off with its Country USA series; the earlier series covered country music from the 1950s through early 1970s. This series continued Time-Life's attempt at chronicling country music's post-1950 history.

During its peak, the "Contemporary Country" series was advertised in television and magazine advertisements. The series was available by subscription (by calling a 1-800 number); those who purchased the series in that fashion received a new volume roughly every other month (on the format of their choice), and had the option of keeping the volumes they wanted. Each volume was also offered for individual sale.

New volumes continued to be issued through 1993, the final one being a volume covering country music from the early 1990s. Another volume – "The Mid-1990s," with 20 tracks from 1991-1998 – was released as part of the series in 2000, seven years after the last disc was issued.

Time-Life continued to offer "Contemporary Country" through the early 2000s (decade). The series has essentially been replaced four series:

"Classic Country," a series cataloging the music from the 1940s through mid-1980s (with some additional volumes containing post-1984 music).
"Country Gold," covering the 1980s through mid-1990s. Three volumes of "Contemporary Country" have been repackaged as part of this series. Also part of this series is "Country's Got Heart," providing post-1990 country music highlights.
"Superstars of Country," containing highlights from the mid-1960s through mid-1980s.
"Lifetime of Country Romance," similar to "Superstars of Country" but focusing more on ballads and love-themed songs.

The series

As with many of Time-Life Records' multi-volume releases, the volumes were not issued in a logical, sequential order by date or era of the subject; that is, issuing volumes covering the early 1970s before progressing to the mid-1970s. In the track information section, the volumes will be listed sequentially by era; the following list is the order in which the volumes were released.

1991

1992

1993

2000

Contemporary Country: The Mid '90s

Track listing