Nashville ~ On The Record

Here's what I like: Nashville (the TV show) - the music. The soap opera aspect of the show simply frustrates me. If you watch Nashville, you've probably noticed the disconnect. It's as if the writers forgot what they wrote only one episode before.

Take, for example, this week's saga. Deacon sidles up to Teddy at Rayna's concert and asks him to ruminate on his (their) daughter's birth. Now, mind you,only an installment or two before, Deacon had punched Teddy's lights out because Teddy and Deacon's "girlfriend" had engaged in a rendezvous in said girlfriend's SUV. Well, I guess, a few days later, all has been forgiven, because now Teddy is more than happy to wax nostalgic about their (shared) kid's entree into the world.

Really? 

And everybody? Stop telling me how Deacon and Rayna really "belong together". I don't give a damn. I like the character of Deacon, but I'm sick to death of him latching onto the crumbs that soulless woman sprinkles across every middle-aged male country singer's county line. I'll accept that Connie Britton is a good actress - everybody keeps telling me she is - so all I am left to conclude is that she is supposed to come across as a heartless bitch.

Don't even get me started on Juliette and Avery. He's a decent guy, and she's just ripped his existence to shreds for no logical reason, especially seeing as how she "loves" him.

Scarlett? What can I say? Every viewer hates her - do the writers get that? The writers keep trying to get us to sympathize with her, but they are apparently staring blindly at some shiny object, while we're all left to hurl heavy objects at our TV screen. Scarlett's whiny and a self-imposed victim. Good singer, though.

Sign me up for Team Gunnar. Sure, he hasn't had much of a storyline lately. They all assumed he was too boring, so instead they tried to pump up Will and whatever-his-fake wife's-name-is story. But Gunnar is at least a songwriter and normal.

Nobody puts Gunnar in a corner. We all kinda like the "normal" people.

Which leads me to the original point of this post - THE MUSIC. Did you catch the Ryman episode? The one with the actors actually performing songs from the series?

If you missed it, check out YouTube.

Annoyingly, I've had some of those damn songs stuck in my head for a couple of weeks now - because they're really good songs. That, however, doesn't negate the irritation of having them swirling around in my brain.

So, taking the advice of some "expert", I've decided to banish those earworms by featuring some of those songs here.

And who better to start with than Gunnar?

This, however, is the song that has been bedeviling me. Stupid perfect song. Perfectly written. Perfect chorus, perfect verse, perfect transition. Damn.

I need to rid myself of this song - because it's too damn perfect:

Trust me - just buy this live album. Help me out here. Maybe if you listen to it enough times, I will finally be rid of it.

I can't take much more of this excruciating, sublime madness.

Adios Old Friend

Nice (I'm being sarcastic) that this video cuts off before the song has ended, but nevertheless, it's a good song.

As you know, I don't listen to music much (at all). I get my paltry provision of music from the show, "Nashville", because, well, I do watch TV, sometimes.

I used to be a songwriter until I realized that was a loser's game, so I stopped writing songs and started writing novels, and that, my friends, is TRULY a loser's game.

But I can still appreciate a good song, and this is one of those. It was written by Brett Eldredge and Kim Tribble (information, by the by, that is near impossible to suss out. Come on people, let's give credit where credit is due, okay?)

Sure, the TV show Nashville is a soap, and I have always disdained soaps, because they remind me of nineteen eighties big shoulder pads shows that starred Linda Evans and that other chick - the British one - who's name escapes me.

But at least Nashville has MUSIC going for it.

So, I'm good with that.

And this is still a really good song.

Nashville

I generally deplore night-time soaps, which is, face it, what almost all so-called "television dramas" are nowadays.

It's not so-much that the shows are poorly-written and trite (well, that's a big part of it), but I don't like to commit myself to watching every episode.  TV should be fun and relaxing; not something to cross off one's to-do list.

That said, I thought I would give Nashville a whirl.  It got glowing reviews on Entertainment Weekly's site (that political hack-rag), and the show is ostensibly about a topic I am semi-interested in.

I will say that the premiere was compelling.  It kept my interest for the entire hour, unlike other shows I've been sucked into trying, which I ended up deleting from my DVR queue after 10 or 15 minutes of utter boredom.

About the show:  It's patently obvious that Hayden Panettiere's character, Juliette Barnes, is modeled after Taylor Swift; not in the "slut" aspect (hopefully!), but in the auto-tuned crappy pop singer vein.  A running dialogue throughout the episode made clear that Juliette's brand of styrofoam music is leading country down the path to ruin, but hey!  That's where the money is!  So....

Connie Britton's Rana is, I'm assuming, a fine-lined used-to-be flavor of the week Faith Hill.  Because Rana is certainly no Martina or even Reba.  Rana bemoans Juliette's "adolescent crap", as she watches her inappropriately-dressed-for-the-Grand-Ol-Opry performance.  Yet, what did we hear emanating from Rana's tonsils just a few moments before, up on that stage?  Maybe not adolescent, but certainly "crap".  (The musical director, and I'm talking to you, T Bone Burnett, needs to come up with better songs.)

Rana professes to adore Rose Colored Glasses, in a radio interview, and she no doubt does, but the 1990's gestation from whence she launched her career was more about "Breathe" than "Stand By Your Man".

Much of the premiere was devoted to a minor storyline involving Rana's diabolical JR-dad, played by Powers Booth, who I love (see "Hatfields and McCoys"), but who I detest in this incarnation.  It's not Powers' fault that his Lamar is a caricature; that's how the part was written.  But the whole backroom political wheeling and dealing just detracts from what the focus of the show should be - the music industry.

The most preposterous scene in the premier involved Deacon's niece, Scarlett, and her little notebook of poems, which her shy admirer, Gunnar, magically turned into "songs".  He, in fact, exclaimed to her, "These aren't poems!  These are songs!"  Malarkey (as Joe Biden would say).  Trust me, poems are not songs.  First of all, a poem generally does not have a chorus....or a bridge.  But ah, this is really fantasy land, so we'll call them "songs".

Rana's producer, Watty White (ick of a name - Watty?), played by JD Souther, who is no slouch when it comes to music (!) is, to me, the most believable character in the show.  He acts like a real producer would; no over-the-top exclamations; just serious; thoughtful.  Watty is in the Bluebird audience, when (magically!) there is time to kill, since nobody had signed up to perform (okay......come on.....).  Thus, Gunnar coaxes Scarlett to join him up on the stage to perform one of the "song-poems".   Scarlett tells the crowd that she's never sung into a "real microphone" before; yet, she gives lie to that deceit when she immediately transforms into a sultry jazzy Lena Horne before our eyes.  Kudos, though, to Sam Palladio and Clare Bowen for, without a doubt, the best song and best performance of the lot.  I don't know what the name of that song is, but I think I might have to look it up.  And wow, that Sam sure has a big vocal range!  Song isn't country, though, but good is good.  That's all I ask in my music nowadays.

It could be interesting to see where this show goes.  I hope they tone down the evil Daddy stuff, and go with their strengths - commentary on the "business" of country music.

Nashville is far from realistic, but it's TV, after all. 

I give the premiere a solid B.


Postscript:

Oh, here it is!



Written by John Paul White & Arum Rae