One Step at a Time Review

The line on Strait is that if you've heard one of his albums, you've heard them all, an assessment that could only be made by someone who really had heard just one of his albums. Following a career trend that had been building for some time, Strait's 1998 One Step at a Time is probably the least traditional album of his career. Throughout, Strait uses twangy instrumentation to create country music out of pop songs, as on the island-sounding "I Just Want to Dance With You," the impossibly catchy "True," the bluesy "Remember the Alamo," and the pop-rocking Mavericks-sound-alike "We Really Shouldn't Be Doing This." One Step at a Time does have one thing in common with previous Strait albums, though: it's one of the year's finer mainstream country efforts. --David Cantwell