LISTENING TO MUSIC: PART I of Many

Country music is an oddity.

I never really liked country music for the longest time. So, having no control over what we were listening to at work, I spent the first few days of being in close proximity to a radio thinking one thought: "This sucks."

After about two weeks of exposure to it, I'd have to say the sting is gone, and some of the songs are actually kind of funny. Like Tim McGraw's "Do You Want Fries With That?" about a guy who, after losing everything after divorcing his wive, meets his ex's new husband at the drive-thru at McDonalds. While the country twang never appealed to me, the whole concept was a somewhat refreshing twist.

And "Alcohol" by Brad Paisley. The singer sings like he's reading off clues from the Twenty Questions boardgame:

"I can make anybody pretty
I can make you believe in a lie
I can make you pick a fight with somebody twice your size

I've been known to cause a few breakups
I've been known to cause a few births"
I can make you new friends...or get you fired from work

and from the day I left Milwaukee
Lynchburg or Bordeaux, France
been making the bars lots of big money
and helping white people dance

got you in trouble in high school
college now that was a ball
had some of the best times you never remember
with me, Alcohol"

While, again, the country twang just ain't my thang, the singer personifying Alcohol did something you don't usually hear in mainstream pop radio.

I can't help but think that people in the southern states would hear Boston's country station, WKOB Country 99.5, and think that we New Englanders had watered down what the station calls the "greatest music in the country."

Greatest? A little pretentious, to be sure. So what is the greatest? I'm not going to ask the question, no one will ever agree. I wouldn't care about the answer anyway. All I will say this: there are some kinds of music that are better than country, and some that are worse.

Another thing: my perception of country music was that it was filled with Jesus-this and Jesus-that and everybody living life in Christ and all kinds of syrupy evangelical Christian ideals. I can only guess that either:

1.) Being the Massachusetts liberals that we are, we watered down the content of the music, OR:
2.) My perception was wrong.

Because whatever the case, very little is mentioned about Jeee-sus or Christianity, specifically. There's talk of going to church and reference to "the Lord" here and there, but not to the extent I expected.

(In case you were wondering, I'm agnostic. My mother was raised catholic, but my father never attended church and neither have I. That's all I'm willing to say at this point.)

So my view on Country has changed. It's changed from being hated to being one of those styles of music that I could go either way on, like Jazz or the highly experimental forms of Rock that my brother listens to. Don't absolutely love em, but won't ask you to change the station either.