Dwight Yoakam - It Only Hurts When I Cry

What this video is

Released in December 1991, this video arrived at the apex of neo-traditional country's commercial dominance, when artists like Yoakam, Clint Black, and Travis Tritt were reclaiming the country charts from the pop-crossover era. Co-written with Roger Miller — one of the last songs Miller completed before his October 1992 death — the track carries a particular elegiac weight. The black-and-white visual treatment…

Why it matters

A canonical artifact of the neo-traditional country revival, this video exemplifies how a deliberate black-and-white aesthetic was wielded as a genre-identity statement in early-1990s country music videos. Plowden's restrained, performance-focused visual grammar foregrounded the song and performer…

The director

Piers Plowden is a film-school-trained director who began his career as a production designer for commercials before transitioning to music video direction. He directed over 100 music videos, earning nominations and awards from both MTV and CMT. His credited…