As the longest running radio broadcast in U.S. history, the Grand Ole Opry has launched the careers of countless country music legends…and now, over a century after it first began, the Opry is still honoring the legacies of those talented musicians.
In honor of the Opry’s 100th Anniversary year (2025), fans voted over the course of 12 months for their favorite country song from over the decades, going all the way back to the 1930s.
While the most voted for tunes weren’t ranked in order of popularity, some of the standout picks from the genre’s earliest years and classic era included The Carter Family’s “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” (1935), Hank Williams‘ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” (1949), Patsy Cline‘s “Walkin’ After Midnight” (1957) and Merle Haggard‘s “Mama Tried” (1968).
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Moving on to the ’70s, fan-favorite songs included hits such as John Denver‘s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (1971), Tanya Tucker‘s “Delta Dawn” (1972) and Dolly Parton‘s “Jolene” (1973), while the selections from the ’80s featured Willie Nelson‘s “Always on My Mind” (1982) and Alabama’s “Mountain Music” (1982), among others.
Unsurprisingly, Garth Brooks showed up more than once in the ’90s category for hits including “Friends in Low Places” (1990); Reba McEntirealso made multiple appearances for songs such as “Is There Life Out There” (1992). The 2000s kicked off with lots of songs from Alan Jackson, including 2003’s “Remember When” and his duet from the same year with Jimmy Buffett, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” while more recent entries came from the likes of Miranda Lambert with “The House That Built Me” (2010) and Lainey Wilson with 2022’s “Watermelon Moonshine.”
So which decade produced the official Opry fan-voted #1 Greatest Country Song of All Time? It was the ’80s, or, to be exact, 1980, the year George Jones released “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”
Related: George Jones & Alan Jackson’s New ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ Opry Duet Will Give You Chills
As the Opry website noted, in honor of the song’s historic ranking, a “Full Circle Mix” of “He Stopped Loving Her Today” featuring Jones and the aforementioned Jackson appears on Opry 100: Country’s Greatest Songs.
Of course, as a majority of Opry fans made perfectly clear, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” is indeed one of the most beloved country songs in history…not just by music lovers, but by fellow musicians. Parton, for example, called it the “country classic of all time.”
“To me, that song is so well written, but it touches every cell in your body, in your heart,” Parton said, according to Far Out magazine. “It’s just like he stopped loving her today, they hung that wreath upon the door.”
“He was never going to stop loving her in his lifetime,” Parton continued. “He had to die. It is so beautiful and, of course, George Jones is my favorite country singer in the world — always was, always will be. Nobody can tell that story like he did.”
Related: Saddest Country Song of the 1980s Was Recorded by Former Marine Who Achieved International Fame
