I know exactly when it happened. The exact moment when I stopped fighting it and succumbed to the sweet sounds of country music. Everyone who likes country, especially those like me who formerly despised it, have that one song that cracked the dam and opened the floodgates. It's as much as where you are and who you're with as it is about the song itself.
For me, it was in the back of a white Escalade that looked like we should have been sipping Cristal from the bottle and listening to Chingy. Instead we were blasting "Back Where I Come From" by Kenny Chesney and drinking out of a pitcher we had just stolen from a Hooters on Cape Cod. I was partly drunk, riding that special high that comes with passing off a fake I.D. and by the second chorus I was crooning with Kenny like I was a farm boy from Tennessee. Aside from vodka and puppies it's probably the greatest thing ever.
For me, it was in the back of a white Escalade that looked like we should have been sipping Cristal from the bottle and listening to Chingy. Instead we were blasting "Back Where I Come From" by Kenny Chesney and drinking out of a pitcher we had just stolen from a Hooters on Cape Cod. I was partly drunk, riding that special high that comes with passing off a fake I.D. and by the second chorus I was crooning with Kenny like I was a farm boy from Tennessee. Aside from vodka and puppies it's probably the greatest thing ever.
Like my board shorts and flip-flops, it always goes away in the Fall. The country music gets packed up and placed in the attic of my iPod. It just doesn't work in the winter. Country musicians do not do weary very well. It needs to be too hot to think or else you talk yourself out of it. The simplistic nature of country music is the number one reason people claim to hate it or love it. I love Matthew McConaughey movies for that same reason; he's just there to have a good time. You wanna join in? Great. If not, your loss. You're probably the kind of person who wouldn't know a good time if it was playing the bongos naked in your living room.
And if you are that kind of person, I can't explain the appeal of country music to you any more than you can explain the appeal of Coldplay to me. One of my country hating friends nailed it on the head: it is a musical genre completely devoid of metaphors. They say what they mean and mean what they say. Anyone uncomfortable with that level of honesty is suspect as far as I'm concerned. There's a kind of intimacy in the straight talk songwriting that you don't really get from self-important acts like The Dave Matthews Band*.
Plus, how hard do you really want to think when the sun's out? Summertime is too damn hot for subtext. I like to do my real analytical thinking in the winter when my Seasonal Affected Disorder is in full swing. Right about now all I want is sun, steel guitars and cooler full of silver bullets. If that sounds like a bad time to you, see you in the fall.
*This will probably be the most controversial thing I've ever written. Dave Matthews Band fans are easily offended and love to try and talk you into liking them. As if it's possible to talk someone into liking a band. Oh, and D.M.B. fans... the girls who listen to country are way hotter than your chicks. Unless you dig leg hair. In which case, enjoy all that.
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