…nice try.
“Helplessly, hopelessly, recklessly falling in loooooooooove…”
Ok, not necessarily big words, but any country song with more than two syllables must cause some serious migraine headaches for the most part of the country music listening population.
What’s up with the new take on literacy by country songwriters? It seems to be the new trend.
um…that was two-syllable words…
Country is (or was, at least in the last few years) the most popular radio format in the United States, including some urban markets, so I hardly think all, or even most, its listeners are monosyllabic subhumans. But if it makes you feel smarter or more elite to believe so, good on ya.
That said, the song “This Kiss” by Faith Hill bugs the crap out of me for its gratuitous use of the words “centripetal,” “centrifugal” (mispronounced as “centrifuhgul”), “perpetual” and “subliminal.” The songwriter should be taken out and flogged.
You mean Faith didn’t write it herself?!? I’m so disillusioned!!!
I’d rather listen to a hundred smarmy rhymy country songs back-to-back than listen to Destiny’s Child or Nellie Furtado attempt to cram as many syllables as possible into a four-beat measure. Same with their vocal histrionics (“I must show my full vocal range as I sing this one word…”)
There was a Joe Diffie song several years ago called ‘This is Your Brain (On Love)’. There was a line in it that went, “and your medula oblongati says get out while you can”. That has to be the only time in the history of country music anybody ever said ‘medula oblongati’ (I hope that’s spelled right)
Somebody once said if you sang a country song backwards you would end up with one with a happy ending !!!
Yup. You’d get your lover back. Your farm back. Your job back. Your dog back. 
The Rodeo Song is one of those. Well, I don’t think that it’s so much for using long words as it is for talking fast. I have no idea who sings it, though.
What rodeo song? I know lots of rodeo songs, but not one that’s specifically titled “The Rodeo Song.” (Two or three called simply “Rodeo,” though.)
Saying “that Rodeo song” in Country is like saying:
That depressing Smiths song.
I happen to love country music (not that new crap turned out by pseudo-country pop artists like Shania Twain)–and I graduated college with highest honors, so we’re not all stupid illiterates! 
Having said that, I must agree that the lyrics to some of these songs are just inane. Like the one Joe Diffie songs about crying “crocodile tears in my pillow.” Apparently, the author of these lyrics seems to believe that the term crocodile tears refers to the size of the tears, when what it’s really talking about is INSINCERE weeping. That is almost as bad as the line in “Dumas Walker” (I’ve posted this on another thread as well) where Mr. Walker “takes all his orders down one at a time. Don’t need a pad he’s got a photogenic mind.” Photogenic refers to the way you come across in a picture–what they’re trying to say is that he has a photographic memory. Drives me absolutely nuts! 
There’s nothing wrong with trying to use intelligent language, but, good grief, if you don’t check the meanings of the words you’re using, you end up sounding dumber than you would’ve if you’d just used a simpler term!
I don’t know about that. I always thought that the mis-use of “photogenic” was intentional. Of course, that could just be me.
Chance, could you be talking about Ain’t Goin’ Down Til The Sun Comes Up?
Could be The Fever (in which case, well, you can’t yell at it for being a country song - it was an Aerosmith song first! They just changed some of the lyrics before Garth Brooks did it).
[Waterboy]
There’s somethin’ wrong with his med-u-la ob-lawn-gotta
[/Waterboy]
I don’t think rapid-fire polysyllabism is so new… Off the top of my head I’m recalling Johnny Cash speedily crooning “I’ve Been Everywhere”:
“Louisville, Nashville, Knoxville, Ombabika,
Shefferville, Jacksonville, Waterville, Costa Rica;
Pittsfield, Springfield, Bakersfield, Shreveport,
Hackensack, Cadillac, Fond du Lac, Davenport;
Idaho, Jellicoe, Argentina, Diamontina,
Pasadena, Catalina, see what I mean’a…”
and the original by Hank Snow in 1953 too!
I might be. The guy I knew who had the tape of it only called it The Rodeo Song. I still remember some of the words:
“Oh, it’s forty below and I ain’t got a truck
And I don’t give a fuck 'cuz I’m off to the rodeo…”
After that there’s a lot more swearing. I imagine that whoever sings that song is a sort of hybrid between Ray Stevens and John Valby.
Ohh yeah, Chance, that’s … um … I forget his name but he’s a dirty bastard.
Amen, Cranky!! I wondered if I was the only one who felt that way about “note-cramming.” It always struck me as nothing more than plain vanity when they feel the need to do this in every single measure. I have also wondered if constantly raising the key of a song is a ploy to keep the ordinary masses from being able to perform their song in local venues. Gospel singer Sandi Patti is prone to do this and that makes it impossible for someone like me who has a low vocal range to perform her music.