Allow me to start off by saying that I thoroughly detest modern country music. I’m okay with bluegrass, love the blues, dig on Cajun and zydeco and can find a bit of love for the old stuff like Johnny Cash and suchlike, but the shite that gets played on current country stations is fucking horrible. Treacly sentimental lyrics, uninspired music, fake accents, lame rhyme schemes, limping scansion, cutesy euphemisms to avoid even the most inoffensive of cuss words (including the old “shaving cream” type “hyuk hyuk, ain’t I daring? I ALMOST said it, hyuk hyuk!!” rhyme schemes,) jingoistic “patriotism,” mindless adulation of a world that if it ever existed (which is highly unlikely) certainly does not now–we’re talking a truly horrible excuse for music here, folks.
Unfortunately, I work at a friend’s shop for up to 12 hours a day. And he listens to a local goat roper station, “The Wolf.” Loudly. All the time. Never turns the radio off, in fact. This station has what seems to be a maximum 20 song playlist. Any one of those twenty songs is execrable enough to make me want to claw my eardrums out of my head rather than listen to it even once, but due to the tiny size of the playlist any one of those songs will cycle through about ten times a day. Were I a christian I would conclude that this scenario would do as an analogue for hell until a more concrete one came along. My guess is that hell probably does feature country music 24/7/365/∞. Good thing I’m an atheist!
So anyway, in spite of my best efforts to tune out this aural pollution it’s getting to me. See, it’s titanically obvious that the only really well crafted aspect of country music is that it’s fucking catchy and it gets stuck in your head. It’s probably due to the incredibly unchallenging nature of the stuff–it’s meant to be inoffensive and immediately accessible. We’re talking so musically shallow it’s possible to sing along to on the first hearing, with the lyrics so painfully obvious it’s unlikely you’ll ever miss a line. Moon, june, spoon, croon–I have a mental image of the Country Music Factory, wherein large rolls of this shit are measured out in three and a half minute long chunks, shrinkwrapped and sent through tubes into the atmosphere.
One of the worst offenders is some song that repeats the words “small town southern man” at the end of EVERY. SINGLE. LINE. About 75 times in all. And I gotta say, whoever this yokel is he has some really low expectations in life. I want to commit a splashy suicide in sympathy for this poor fucker because I feel like I’ve lived his entire pointless life every time I hear this song–which, have I mentioned is about fifteen times a day? And now I’m hearing it ALL THE TIME. In MY HEAD. Where NO country song is EVER supposed to be.
Sometimes that song shuts up, but in its place comes another horror of modern twangitude in which some dude with a carefully faked “country” accent which I’ll wager he does not sport in his normal speaking voice goes on about how it used to scare the shit outta him as a teenager to be threatened with a gun should he even think of getting slightly jiggy with his date, but now that he has a daughter of his own he finds it most admirable to continue the pants wetting tradition of threatening his daughter’s dates in the same manner. This one, in addition to irritating me beyond belief with its saccharine sentiments and lameass lyric structure also infuriates me past all reason with its paternalistic (in the very literal sense) attitude–gods forbid his daughter should actually think for herself and decide for herself how she expresses her sexuality and that Daddy actually oh, I don’t know, RESPECT HER CHOICES and trust her to choose wisely or anything. Aw, hell’s naw, because Daddy’s there to SHOOT HER DATE if he gets outta line! My own analysis is that Daddy is WAY too preoccupied with his little girl’s budding sexuality and is actually marking his territory–that little maidenhead is HIS, dammit, and no uppity, pimply kid is gonna get what Daddy’s worked so hard to groom! Gak, shudder, I throw up a little in my mouth when this one gets going.
Those are the two worst offenders, but there are others. “I wanna check you for ticks.” “She thinks my tractor’s sexy.” “Remember that I’m still a guy.” It’s driving me insane! I try to plug in my mp3 player and drown it out with NIN or Apollo 440 or Mos Def or the Cramps or just ANYTHING ELSE, but it’s getting harder and harder–I have to take my earbuds out in order to talk to anyone, and my work requires I talk to people. I fear that soon I’m gonna go totally postal and they’ll put me in a wet pack in the hospital–with a nice, "inoffensive"country station on the radio to keep me company…
FUCK!*
*Did I mention how much I dislike country music?
I think the reason why bad country music is so totally intolerable is that there is NO ESCAPE. The words are clearly discernible, the music is bland and unchallenging, there’s nothing to hide behind. I can listen to execrable alt rock if it’s loud and unintelligible enough because I’m only hearing the music and I can fool myself that the lyrics don’t really suck. If it’s Cookie Monster vocals, though, it’s totally off the list.
