A lady friend told me about this (wonderful?) song awhile back. I tole her just tonight about you guys ragging on this song. I prefer songs about chasing the blues in a honky-tonk with lots of cold longnecks. But she likes songs that tell stories, which country music does.
Jeeez!!! This is the second post in the last 24 hours where my sarcasm has been taken as literal truth. I’m highly dissappointed.
WHat makes you think he memorized the song? He copied the lyrics from the link he provided.
I, too, object strenuously to the song Esprix has cited. It’s not so much that the song is about religion (in it’s own emetically saccharine way) as it is the proselytizing, condemning tone. The public radio stations in the country format seem to feel pretty free about assuming their listeners are all Christian and (especially this time of year) choose playlists accordingly. I don’t have a problem with the songs themselves or anyone who enjoys them, but I do have a problem with a public format taking such a simplistic view of the orientation and beliefs of it’s listeners. It’s rather condescending for the format to think all of the audience will appreciate hearing such a blatant sermon.
Then again, I would hate to see anything done to further restrict the limits of what music can be played on public stations. As much as this song and others of it’s ilk make me want to vomit, I think that a cure (of banning religious music in non-religious formats) may end up being worse than the disease.
In whom? It didn’t come across as sarcasm, at least not to me. Maybe using those emoticons isn’t such a bad idea after all.
Well not being a real country music fan myself I pretty much am limited on what music I like that I think would be played on those stations, but what about some of the gosphel stuff? I don’t mean like stuff people sing in church nessisarily but like Lyle Lovett has a song called “Church” that kinda’ kicks ass and I’m sure there are others.
Isn’t it a rule that country music has to be about, dogs, dyin’, driunkin, jail, trains, trucks, farms, Christmas, or mamma?
You know the song: Ever since the dog got drunk and died…and mamma went to prison, well nothin’ round this farm has been the same…And John you know, when mom broke out last Christmas…she drove that ol’ getaway laundry truck…Right into a trainnnnnn!!
You forgot Indians, Constructions Workers, Leather Men, and Military Guys. And they can dance too!
When I was managing a fast food joint one of my employees was dating a singer/guitar player in a C&W band. The whole bands wasn’t gay and he was not out to his audience but the band did know (kinda hard to hide with your boyfriend right there all the time at practice. “Say…uh, Earl…uh well, we wuz wonderin’ whats with your roomate? He is your roomate, isn’t he Earl?”.). Lani (my employee) was VERY much the flamer but his boyfriend never one tripped my “gaydar” which is usually pretty reliable. Lani even had the bumber sticker “Wrangler Butts Drive Me Nuts!”. Have to admit tho’ that it took some skull sweat to get my mind around a country lovin’ couple of gay men. Lezbians, sure. But gay men??
Esprite, you’re such a goddamned one-trick pony. All you ever do is post about country music; it’s country music this, country music that. I’m sick of your country-music-fan martyr routine. Is that the only thing you ever talk about?
(D&R)
What do you get when you play rock and roll music backwards? Satanic lyrics.
What do you get when you play country music backwards? You get your dog back, your truck back, your job back, and your girl back.
What do you get when you play NuAge music backwards? Better NuAge music.
As was pointed out, grienspace, I got the lyrics from JMM’s website. I only needed to hear the song once to know I hated it.
Esprix
I agree with you. I only need one time to realize that I hate almost every country song that is produced. The only other music I can say this about is most of the pop shit they play on MTV. Brittney Spears and Shania Twain should both quit music and go into the industry most men would like to see them in… PORN.
If you want christian country songs off your radio station, I would like all the shitty music off of mine. I’ll make you that deal. I’ll stop the religous people, you stop talentless people. We’ll clean up the music industry. Deal?
I have nothing to add other than to speak up as another gay man who likes country music.
And that song makes me gag, too. Which is a shame, since I usually like John Michael Montgomery’s music as well.
Oh well.
Don’t look at me – you’re the one who likes country music.
That wasn’t country, and I couldn’t tell you what it was.
Did it have any relevance?
Esprix
POISON IVY –
Oh, c’mon. The radio stations don’t care about what some of it’s listeners want to hear; it cares about what most of it’s listeners want to hear – because it wants the maximum number of people to keep tuning in and listening to the advertisements. That’s all commercial radio is, you know; advertisements held together by a little poplular music to keep you tuned in.
This song is in heavly play because it is a VERY popular song. Although we in this thread – taste-meisters that we all are 
– agree that it’s a BAD song, there are a lot of people who apparently really, really like it. That’s why the stations play it. I assure you, though, that commercial radio does not give a shit about the “orientation or beliefs” of it’s listeners unless or until it thinks they’ll stop listening.
ZEN101 –
I think the song you’re thinking of is “You Don’t Even Call Me By My Name,” by David Allan Coe, which is a GREAT song. He sings the first two verses and then talks over the bridge about how the songwriter told him it was the perfect country song, but he told the songwriter it couldn’t be because it didn’t talk about trucks or trains or mama, or prison or rain or getting drunk. So he wrote this next verse: “I was drunk the day my mama got out of prison . . . .” It’s a hilarious song, and if you like true country, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than DAC. He’s great.
Oh, and I noticed the Snopes link had JMM saying of the story, “If it’s not true it ought to be.” Right! Because the only thing better than a fictional story of murder-suicide in front of a child would be if that sort of scarring appalling story was true! :rolleyes:
Here’s a review that super_head and I did of this song a while back…
> Song: The Little Girl
> Sung by: John Michael Montgomery
>
> INTRO: [C F C F C AM G] (twice)
>
> Her Parents never took the young girl to church
> Never spoke of his name, never read her his word
> Two nonbelievers walking lost in this world
> Took their baby with them what a sad little girl
Those damn atheists, ruining the lives of children. Everyone knows they can’t be upstanding and loving parents like good Christians!
>
> Her daddy drank all day and mommy did drugs
> Never wanted to play or give kisses and hugs
See? Told you! Atheists suck! You tell’em!
> She’d watch the TV and sit there on the couch
> while her mom fell asleep and her daddy went out
>
> and the drinking and the fighting
> just got worse every night
> behind their couch she’d be hiding
> oh what a sad little life
Ah, someone, please, stop this tear that is a-fallin’ from my eyes. Nothing makes me well up like saccharine-sweet and trite lyrics.
> BRIDGE: [C F C F C AM G]
Hmm, is it tall enough for the songwriter to jump off of to end it all? Let us pray.
> And like it always does the bad just got worse
> with every slap and every curse
> until her daddy in a drunk rage one night
> used a gun on her mom and then took his life
Yup, I know whever I go out and get drunk, the first thing I want to do is bust a cap on someone. Puh-lease. Retch, barf, gag.
> and some people from a city
> took the girl far away
> to a new mom and a new dad
> kisses and hugs every day
>
> BRIDGE: (Same as before)
If someone could off themselves twice, I would certainly suggest the author of this travesty of songwriting make an attempt.
> her first day of Sunday school the teacher walked in
> and a small little girl stared at a picture of him
I think for comedic effect, it should be a picture of Ben Vereen or something.
> she said I know that man up there on that cross
> I don’t know his name but I know he got off
Got off? Would that be like the Second Coming of Christ?
Clean up on aisle one!
> cause he was there in my old house
> and held me close to his side
> as I hid there behind our couch
> the night that my parents died
Not that I’m atheist or anything, but Jesus couldn’t save her parents? Yes, that’s a lovely song.
> OUTRO:[C F C F C Am G]
>
> Nice near rhyming AABB rhyme scheme.
> It’s same thing I see and keep telling myself over and over when I
>study
> lyrics of successful songs. The same format I continue to see - Keep
>it
> simple and focused, and go into details.
In this case, though, simple-minded is more the tone of the song.
This song is awful, and I mean awful with a capital “BULLSHIT.” If I’d written this piece of soft, off-the-sweetness-scale piece of filth, I might consider never showing my face in public again. Shame on ANYONE with the lack of good taste to inflict this abortion on the public, and shame on anyone who can’t see through its cheap, tacky, tear-jerking veneer. This is not quality songwriting, people. It’s shameless pandering. It is the worst sort of emotional manipulation, and utter irresponsibility, to boot.
The apparent message of this song: Jesus is cool. He saved a little girl from being killed.
The real message in this song: Jesus is cool. He saved a little girl from being murdered by her horrible, hell-is-too-damn (pun intended)- good-for-them-sayeth-the-Lord, atheist parents.
Use your freaking minds, people. Atheists aren’t evil people. They don’t all do drugs, murder kids, kick puppies, and tear the labels off their mattresses. Only the cool ones do*. Here’s the scary thing: J.M. Montgomery was probably as taken in by the diabetic coma-inducing sweetness as the rest of the brain-dead listening public. I’d actually prefer tothink he’s stupid, rather than face the possibility that he recorded a propaganda song that demonizes perfectly good people for the sake of a miserable dollar.
*That was a joke. I include that caveat because it is obvious to me that most people can’t tell the difference between truth and fiction, as illustrated by the popularity of this horrible song.
Is it possible that “John Michael Montgomery” is just a pseudonym for . . . BOBBY GOLDSBORO?
Only the perpetrator of such musical Karo Syrup as “Honey” and “Watching Whathisname Grow” could’ve come up with that.
I was only teasing you ala RickJay’s comments above.
Just a minor nitpick, but Snopes attributes this quote to the songwriter, Harley Allen, not John Michael Montgomery.
Carry on.
Where was that wonderful quote I read in this very forum about writers being misunderstood? Oh here…
So don’t be “dissappointed” in us, k? And leave off that last s for savings, will ya?
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I kinda like the song. Certainly I liked it a lot the first time I heard it; it has subsequently lost some of its charm through dint of constant repetition.
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I didn’t take the meaning that so many of the previous posters have suggested: that the girl’s parents were abusive and drug-addicted because they lacked God in their lives. Rather, I took it to be simply a set of descriptors: drugs, no hugs, no God. Undoubtedly, the singer believes the latter to be a serious lack, if not exactly on par with abuse and murder; the listener may disagree, but it’s not an uncommon belief.
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If you don’t like a pro-Christian message from a commercial musician, being played on commerical radio… too bad. Others do, and it is their liking which sustains the airplay.
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Merry Christmas.
- Rick