List of Hot Country Singles number ones of 1986

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Hot Country Songs is Billboard’s chart of the top US country songs. In 1986, 52 different songs reached number one, and no song stayed at the top for more than one week that year. The rankings came from radio playlists and store sales.

The year began with the Judds’ Have Mercy as the first number one. In the fall, Conway Twitty earned his 40th and final Hot Country number one with Desperado Love, 18 years after his first chart-topper, Next in Line. Twitty’s total of 40 number ones would be a record until 2006, when George Strait broke it.

Two female acts tied for the most number ones in 1986, each with three: the Forester Sisters (including one collaboration with the Bellamy Brothers) and the Judds. More than a dozen acts each had two number ones, including Crystal Gayle and Gary Morris, who each had a solo number one and also performed together on Makin’ Up for Lost Time (The Dallas Lovers’ Song).

One of Juice Newton’s two number ones, Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers), a duet with Eddie Rabbitt, had originally been performed on Days of Our Lives by Gloria Loring and Carl Anderson the previous year. The song wasn’t released commercially at first, but after Newton and Rabbitt’s version became a hit, Loring and Anderson’s recording was released and topped the Hot Adult Contemporary chart, meaning two versions of the same song topped different charts within about a month.

Acts reaching the country chart for the first time in 1986 included Randy Travis with On the Other Hand. Initially, the song failed to break into the top 40, but after Travis’s earlier hit 1982, the song was re-released and went to number one, giving him his first chart-topper. Later in the year, T. Graham Brown earned his first number one with Hell and High Water, and Restless Heart reached the top with That Rock Won’t Roll, one of four chart-toppers from the Wheels album.

The year ended with Hank Williams Jr. at number one with Mind Your Own Business, a version of a 1949 Hank Williams song, featuring vocals from Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty, and Reverend Ike.