Earl Thomas Conley Earl Thomas Conley (born October 17, 1941, Portsmouth, Ohio, United States) is an American country music singer-songwriter. Between 1980 and 2003, he recorded ten studio albums, including seven for the RCA Records label. In the 1980s and into the 1990s, Conley also charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, of which eighteen reached Number One. Conley's eighteen Billboard Number One country singles during the 1980s marked the most Number One hits by any artist in any genre during that decade except for Alabama and Ronnie Milsap. Throughout his career, Conley's music has been referred to as "thinking man's country." This is because the narrator looks into the heart and soul of his characters in each song.