Country Music as Art

(12/2006)

My spouse loves that Country Music. Not just Country, but "Young" country. What does young mean. Does it mean they put the stars out to pasture before they get too unappealing to the youngest, spendiest demographic? Does that mean that the Willies and Johnnys and Lorettas and Dollys of the future will fade to nothingness before they can have the second, third and fourth acts of their careers as their namesakes did? I have to say I don't like the "young" stuff too much. About the youngest star I can really listen to is Dwight Yoakam, who happens to have made is debut album north of twenty years ago. So I'm somewhat out of it.
So when I tell you I did some analysis of Country you'll forgive me, perhaps, if my studies are prejudiced by the older artists.

I figured out what Country Music has to say to me. It only came clear to me when I started thinking of the songs as part of a literary canon that should be studied with the nose held, in much the same was I held my nose whilst wading through "Classical" English Literature, such as the Bronte Sisters and whoever wrote Frankenstein.

The lament features a person with a "steady heart", known as "Me", paired tragically with someone who likes to go off dancing and cheating while poor Me cries; this person is known as "You". You makes Me feel like crap by Me can't help coming back again and again, or letting You in the door late at night even though You might smell like cheap perfume and alcohol, because Me can't live without You. Me even tried to live without you; this was folly for a "steady heart", incapable of the same neglectful lifestyle that You relishes.

Me may be a steady heart who can't live without You, but Me is no fool. Me even tried to go out with He or She for a while but the thought of You spoiled any effort to find new romance. For some reason He was boring and unattractive to Me, and even though He offered Me the world, You got in the way of Me's new love without even trying. He was patient and tried hard to understand the spell You held over Me, but ultimately that made Me find He even less attractive. Where Me found a She to love, there were a number of different reactions. Sometimes She was boring just like He; other times She was even more neglectful than You, causing Me's heart to be broken twice over.

My research has found, then, that Me is not just a "steady heart" but that Me loved You because of how callous You could be. You might have some words to say in defense of all this alleged mistreatment, but alas You was the silent one in every case, so research yielded no results. In the popular case of a duet, both voices inevitably sing the part of Me, causing the listener great disappointment to discover there are two Yous out there; that they are equally selfish and uncaring; and that they will not be allowed to speak for themselves, most of the time.

December 31, 2006