Oh Goodie, A New Scold Weighs In

 

Country music used to be about the human condition, or at least about the things people cared about, or laments for what might have been. Rarely was it aspirational.

There stands the glass

That will ease all my pain

That's what always separated country from pop. Face it, country was rarely happy, because real life isn't always happy. Sometimes it is. I mean, one can let loose on a Saturday night; stomp their heels on a plank dance floor, twirl their partner into their arms to a two-step shuffle, but more often than not, although the music is bouncy, the lyrics are dismal.

Though we both tried, our love still died, and now she's gone from me
Back to the only life she's known 

Back where the music's loud, back to that swinging crowd
That's where my baby feels at home

Country fans recognize life for what it is and still press on through, and a thumping bass guitar and a four-four drum beat sure don't hurt.

Probably the biggest difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals picture things the way they want them to be, while conservatives see life as it really is. The benefit of viewing the actual picture is that one understands people for what they are ~ messy, laden with childhood traumas that seep into everyday life, yet they've plowed through the pain and created a life that's the best they can muster.

Enter someone named Maren Morris. 

I knew nothing about her music, so I pulled up a couple of YouTube videos. I learned that she really likes to drive and that she has a voice that, while not terrible, doesn't resonate like a Tanya Tucker or a Patty Loveless. She's mediocre, like ninety-nine per cent of today's country artists.

Yet, this Maren girl is nothing if not sanctimonious. She relishes picking fights with the wives of fellow artists, schooling them on how to think, then sobbing self-pityingly into her Twitter feed when everybody in the whole wide world doesn't kowtow to her ideology.

Maren, baby, pay your country dues and then maybe we'll talk.

“I hate feeling like I need to be the hall monitor of treating people like human beings in country music,” she mewled recently in an LA Times interview; all the while spewing epithets like "Insurrection Barbie" at her fellow "human beings". 

Apparently Maren's cause de jour is hacking off the breasts of pre-teen girls and loading them up with testosterone in the name of compassion. If Charlie Rich were alive today, he'd set fire to her manifesto and snort with abandon as it went up in flames.

Shawn Fleetwood of The Federalist captured this dystopian tale better than I ever could, but what I do have to back me up is fifty-plus years of studying country music, understanding it, bathing myself in its baptismal waters.

“I think there are people in country music that want it to be niche.“They don’t want it to expand. They don’t care about it becoming more inclusive. It’s theirs, and everyone else is an other, or woke, or whatever.", Maren said in her interview.

Ding! Ding! Ding! 

Yep, country music is mine, Maren! Keep on drivin' that car until you reach utopia.

Hint: Utopia never comes.

 

Part 3 ~ Fake Outrage

Eeek!

In Part 3 of my "new country" screed, let's discuss fake outrage and grasping for relevancy.

Part 1 was an excruciating listen and on-the-spot review of July's top ten tracks.

Part 2 discussed the sad cookie cutter state of today's music.

This installment returns me to artists I'm at least a bit familiar with, albeit they've changed, by God! Just watch! They're woke!

The Dixie Chicks are back after a fourteen year recording drought. There was a time, okay a really brief time, when the group formerly known as The Dixie Chicks were hot. That time was 1998 to 1999 and comprised two albums, Wide Open Spaces and Fly. They also released Home in 2002, but the album produced no hits, nor did Taking The Long Way, which dropped in 2006.

Thus, two hit LP's.

2006 was approximately the time that Natalie Maines shot off her mouth about the president, which is neither here nor there (and seems quaint in retrospect). The group milked the ensuing publicity, but the fact was, by that time they were already living off seven-year-old hits and no one really cared.

Fourteen years later, the Dixie Chicks are back with a shortened name; and no offense, but they're really no longer "chicks". The word Dixie obviously is now forbidden. Always adept at garnering press, they've been bestowed with a glowing New York Times article. And they're still nursing grievances, new and ancient.

Let's face it; other artists from their era aren't getting written up in The Times. I haven't caught a feature about Diamond Rio or Lee Ann Womack. No, The Dixie Chicks are news because they're "sassy". Or at least Natalie is. We don't really hear much from Martie and Emily.

Natalie is what we benevolently call a drama queen. It seems she's recently divorced and has some scores to settle. And this is what the single "Gaslighter" is apparently about. I surfed on over to YouTube to check out the track. It's not terrible. Not great, but it doesn't reek, either. The harmonies by the unspoken other members of the group help...a lot.



Unfortunately, what stands out for me is Natalie's severe butch haircut. I'm sure that's another statement, but all it states for me is Angela Kinsey from The Office. And here's a clue, New York Times and Dixie Chicks: women have other emotions beside "defiant". It must be draining to live one's life in a perpetual state of fury.


In other "woke" news, Lady Antebellum has changed their name to "Lady A". Firstly, I don't know how the two guys in the band feel about being referred to as ladies, but I guess they must be okay with it after all these years. Second, they might have wanted to conduct a Google search to find out if anyone else was using the moniker "Lady A". Sure enough there was, and she wants ten million dollars in compensation (a Google search, by the way, costs zero dollars). Now the band Lady Antebellum A is suing the original Lady A (Anita White, who, by the way, is African-American) because the band trademarked the name in 2011 but never used it. Good job, woke musicians! You've endeared yourselves to countless downtrodden minorities!

All I know about Lady Antebellum A is that their biggest, and basically only,  hit was a rip-off of an Alan Parsons Project single, Eye In The Sky.







At least Lady Antebellum A ripped off a white artist that time.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave....

So, essentially Lady Antebellum A are neither ladies nor original. And they hate African-Americans. Great job! Now if Hillary Scott dons a severe hairdo, she'll have completed the trifecta.

Thanks for your wokeness, ladies (and token males).

I prefer not to thrust my finger to the winds.