I will be the first one to stand up and admit, I am not a country music fan. Ghetto rap maybe….
(Please take note of the Breakfast with Tiffany artwork in the background….This sums up how truly gangster I was.)
But never country.
Or so I thought.
A friend of mine got me tickets to Brad Paisley for Christmas and I was psyched. Number one because I love live music in any form. Number two because Brad Paisley has music on MY radio stations. You know the ones that play those poppy tunes you get stuck in your head for weeks at a time? I would consider those stations MINE. I also consider the hippy jam band stations MINE, as well as the hip hop and classical rock stations. They’re all MINE and I love them. Flipping to a country station?!
It makes me feel like Spock or Captain Kirk staring into vast, unexplored space terretories.
Something magical overcame me at the concert the other night though. It was so powerful I thought for sure Brad Paisley was some sort of hypnotist or magician (I googled it and couldn’t find anything. I’ll check the tabloids tomorrow). How could this country star convert a die hard country naysayer? Welp, he did. There is something different about country music.
They sing about things that make my heart happy…
“It aint hip to sing about tractors, trucks
Little towns and mama
Yeah that might be true
But this is country music and we do”Â
Things that make me laugh…
These days there’s dudes getting facials
Manicured, waxed and botoxed
With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotiony hands
You can’t grip a tacklebox
With all of these men lining up to get neutered
It’s hip now to be feminized
I don’t highlight my hair
I’ve still got a pair
Yeah honey, I’m still a guy
Things that make me nostalgic…
Yeah I think I’ll make me some homemade soupÂ
Feelin pretty good and that’s the truthÂ
It’s neither drink nor drug inducedÂ
No I’m just doin alright
And it’s a great day to be aliveÂ
I know the sun’s still shinin when I close my eyesÂ
There’s some hard times in the neigborhoodÂ
But why can’t every day be just this good?
And things that make me cry…
She put him out like the burnin’ end of a midnight cigarette
She broke his heart, he spent his whole life tryin’ to forget
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind
Until the night
I may make fun of it, but this girl has grown a new appreciation for country livin’.
Country music may get blamed for being silly, unpoetic, and simple but I praise it for those very qualities. It is unpoetic because it is real. It is silly because who cares what anyone thinks anyways?! And it is simple because that’s how life’s supposed to be…
Simple.
