2001-06-20 - 11:36 p.m.

Are You Ready For the Country?

As I said in a previous entry, I've been downloading songs from 1998, and listening to them on my MP3 player.

I downloaded every song that made the Top 100 that I didn't have already, plus a few from some of the other charts: Mainstream Rock, Alternative Rock, Easy Listening, Bubbling Under the Top 100, etc.

When all was said and done I had about 410 songs, which I then started listening to in order, and I'm about half done now.

Folks, there's a lot of crap in there. A lot. But I am trying to keep an open mind.

I've mentioned before that I don't like country music. For the most part, it's too simple for my liking. To my ear the melodies are plain and uninteresting and most of the lyrics are simple-minded, to say the least.

In the past I've heard a song by a country artist that I've liked, and I've bought the CD, only to find that the rest of the album was just pap.

Also, country music doesn't seem that "country" at all. If this were 1976 most of what passes for country today would be called "mid-tempo ballads." Put a cowboy hat on him and give him a southern accent, and Jackson Browne would be "country."

This statement may show my own prejudices, but there seems something vaguely racist about country music. It seems to exist only so that you can be 100% sure there are no black people singing on your records. I can't think of any other music genre that is so lily-white. There are more black people singing opera than C & W, for fuck's sake!

For all that, occasionally the Nashville Music Machine produces music that I like. There are also artists along the fringes of country music that are some of my favorites: Shawn Colvin, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Lucinda Williams, Gordon Lightfoot, to name a few.

There are two songs by country artists that caught me by the ear.

The first was by Clay Walker, a song called "Then What" a song warning a friend not to start cheating on his wife.

The chorus:

Then what?
What you gonna do
When the new wears off
and the old shines through,
And it ain't really love,
And it ain't really lust,
You ain't anybody anybody's gonna trust
Then what? Where you gonna turn
When you can't turn back
For the bridges you've burned
And fate can't wait to kick you in the butt
Then what?

Yeah it's funny, but true. I've been there, folks. I've learned the hard way that someone who will cheat WITH you will probably also cheat ON you. I know it's a traditional subject for a country song, but the lyrics are witty.

Like I said above, this song is by a country artist, but barely sounds "country" at all. It actually sounds Caribbean, and there is generous use of steel drums. However, I'm pretty sure that I'd hate the rest of the album that this song is on.

The other song that brought me up short is a much more traditional country song, with the usual steel guitars, fiddles and whatnot. It isn't so much the melody, but the lyrics that hit me like an arrow through the heart. It got me all misty - I am a sentimental sap when struck the wrong way, or the right way in this case.

The song is "Don't Laugh At Me" by Mark Wills, a heartfelt plea for sympathy for those who have been unlucky in life. Actually, it isn't really a plea for sympathy, just asking for the bare minimum of human decency. Yeah, the song is hokey, but you can't doubt the sincerity of the singer.

The entire song:

Don't Laugh At Me

I'm a little boy with glasses
The one they call the geek
A little girl who never smiles
Because I've got braces on my teeth
And I know how it feels

To cry myself to sleep

I'm that kid on every playground,
That's always chosen last.
A single teenage mother,
Trying to overcome my past.
You don't have to be my friend
But is it too much to ask--

Don't laugh at me,
Don't call me names,
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes were all the same
Some day we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me.

I'm that cripple on the corner,
You pass me on the street,
I wouldn't be out here begging
If I had enough to eat
And don't think I don't notice
That our eyes never meet.

I lost my wife and little boy,
Someone crossed that yellow line,
The day we laid them in the ground
Is the day I lost my mind
Right now I'm down to holding
This little cardboard sign.

So don't laugh at me,
Don't call me names,
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes were all the same
Some day we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me.

I'm fat, I'm thin,
I'm short, I'm tall,
I'm deaf, I'm blind,
Hey aren't we all?

Don't laugh at me.