“I like all types of music ““ except country lol.”
Lolz indeed.
How many times have we all read that on facebook profiles Internet-wide. It’s an understandable sentiment, given that other genres of music all intermingle in the mainstream, while country music is seen as an almost entirely separate entity, often looked down upon as the music of slack-jawed yokels and confederate sympathizers.
However, it’s no secret that country music is a charging, straight-talkin’ juggernaut that has artists that routinely go gold and platinum with far more regularity than any flavor-of-the-month rapster (not like anyone really goes platinum anymore anyway, but that’s another column). Taylor Swift went triple-0 platinum with her debut album when she was 16 years old fer chrissakes.
So we have an interesting dichotomy: People clearly love country music, as evidenced by sales figures, but many people deny even listening to it. However, this is probably a sampling bias on my part, due to the fact that the whole “anything but country” phrase is commonplace on the Internet ““ the domain of young people. This medium does not account for the purchasing power of Aunt Charlene and Uncle Darryl, who most certainly do not spend their time poring over what to self-disclose over the Internets.
The analysis of the appeal of country music is a practice that has beguiled and fascinated rock critics for decades. The average critic will delve into Johnny Cash and maybe some Gram Parsons, but Nashville country and contemporary country remain relatively untouched, possibly due to their status as “low art.”
However, this label of country music as lowbrow, or common, is exactly what can account for its appeal. This argument was laid out carefully in the illuminating essay “Toby Over Moby” by rock critic enfant terrible Chuck Klosterman. C. Klo maintains that country appeals to so many people and subsequently sells so well is because it is so unbelievably literal. In other words, the lyrics themselves are taken at face value. No obstructions, metaphors, allegories. By making their songs literal stories, the artists make themselves easier to relate to, making it truly music for the masses.
However, my great revelation about this genre was that the music videos for country music are just as literal as the songs they supposedly expand upon.
While I was gradually frittering away my time during finals week, one of my friends (from Northern California, where country music seems to have more of a foothold) took the liberty of showing me a Kenny Chesney music video for his song “There Goes My Life.” In the lyrics of the song, Chesney tells the story of a high school kid who knocks up his girlfriend, can’t go to college (there goes his life), but, in true country song third-verse twist fashion, his daughter grows up to be his proudest achievement, and she goes off to college (there goes his life, again).
The video adds nothing to the story except wordless actors responding like marionettes to Chesney’s lyrics. We see Young Jock and Girlfriend coming to terms with their impending parenthood, when Kenny says that the baby is stumbling up the stairs, she is shown doing so, and when said baby smiles back at her dad in the song, there she is, all pearly white baby-teeth.
Despite the unrelenting sap factor of the song and video, I guess I can’t really blame the director for taking cues directly from the lyrics, since they tell a story already. I guess I’m just used to song lyrics not telling a hyperlinear story with a beginning, middle and end and easily discernible characters. For example, a linear literal video for a song like “My Name is Jonas” by Weezer wouldn’t really work. We know there’s a Jonas, and he has a brother, but what’s his relation to the foreman? And the workers? Are they going home because the foreman can’t work? And what’s the name of the guy from the second verse? Weepeal? I’m confused.
So I guess I can’t really fault the director since he had such a primo script on his hands and since the story-song is just a trapping of the genre. But the literal video and literal lyrics only serve to reinforce the point that country music succeeds by not clouding the vision of the audience with fancy-schmancy metaphors and figures of speech, but simply by telling the stories of salt-of-the-earth folk, with stories painted with broad enough strokes so that the audience listening can project their own details onto the templates of life detailed in the songs.
However, my incredulousness at the corniness of the execution of the literal adaptation of the lyrics gave me a huge realization ““ the next stop on the straight talk express of country music is a new supergenre of crowd-pleasing literal music: meta-country.
Chesney’s next hit should be a song about how much you’re going to enjoy his song. The video could have Chesney singing in a Wal-Mart, and detail how you looked at the album’s great packaging and graphic design, saw the sticker on the front advertising the singles. He could then show you reclining at your home, enjoying the music, and then perhaps uploading your favorite songs (or maybe even the whole album) to the portable mp3 player of your choosing. Chesney doesn’t discriminate between iPod and Zune. Finally, he could detail your woe when the CD becomes too scratched to play in your car anymore, and describe you burning a copy from the files uploaded to your computer.
In other words, if country musicians are really going to throw just-vague-enough story skeletons for us to hang our own personal tragic details on in order to relate to and enjoy them, they might as well just cut to the chase and try to convince us we like the song through sheer willpower. That’s what rappers have been doing for years anyway.
If you would buy Kenny Chesney’s upcoming 2010 release “You’ll Love This, I Guarantee It,” then e-mail Ayres at jayres@media.ucla.edu.