If it can be said that graphic video games promote violence because the kids don’t see the fact that real bullets and real grenades make real blood, real pain and real death, then it should be said that CM promotes a sick society because lost upon us is the fact the real lasciviousness and real infidelity make real pain, real orphans and real destruction and real divorce.
I was shopping for a few food items at Price Chopper the other night and after a few minutes, I realized my intellect was being assaulted by the mindless blather of lyrics someone must have scribbled onto a Dixie cup and sold to Nashville as a Country Song. The words were pretty much the same bottom of the barrel scrapings as the previous song(s).
I’m not sure who puts these so called lyrical master pieces to music, but apparently they have a data base of about three to four standardized melody models that sell. Change a few notes here and there, change the timing and the rhythm a bit and “Voila!!” A new hit Country song!!!
The Country music culture began as a grass roots level culture and was never at the top of the intellectual scale and it doesn’t need to be any more than any other art or musical culture needs to be.
But what is it with the CM people? Not only does one song sound just like the last song, most of the lyrics lack any creativity, thought process or imagination. Those that do have any real point promote a love / hate relationship between the sexes, debase women to dense and depraved objects who think “tractors are sexy,” and present a twisted set of values such that women are something you hate and “bars are something you love.”
In fact, if you look at the word picture depicted by the generic whole of country music, you can easily visualize the life they sing about as a community of double wides. Inside is a picture of Jesus, a statue of Elvis and a neon Budweiser sign. Outside is a Ford F250 Heavy Duty Pickup that will never see a bale of hay, a roll of barbed wire or a cord of wood and whose only function is a status symbol which can haul empty beer cans and a Smokey Joe grill.
The population of this Country Music culture community consists of hard working, hard partying men, lascivious women, wives with the “wrong boots under their beds” and husbands with the wrong woman in their pickups, all of which are “D-I-V-O-R-C-E - ees.”
The only business establishment in this double wide community is the bar where you can have the time of your life” drinkin doubles” because your ex walked in with your present wife’s ex.
There you can drink yourself to oblivion to bury the remorse of losing your last double wide, your last truck and your last bass boat to your last wife, rather than deal with your own issues and baggage. When you finally get sober, you can reflect back on the 70’s when you were in high school and things were simple, just before you screwed your life up by marrying the “redneck girl.”
They say they are just singing about the hardships that come with real life issues, which is a very human thing to do. But if lasciviousness, infidelity, divorce and drunkenness are such normal real life issues then so are the heartbroken and emotionally scarred children who are victims of that lifestyle. But they don’t sing about that part do they.
If it can be said that graphic video games promote violence because the kids don’t see the fact that real bullets and real grenades make real blood, real pain and real death, then it should be said that CM promotes a sick society because lost upon us is the fact the real lasciviousness and real infidelity make real pain, real orphans and real destruction and real divorce.
So here’s a formula for divorce: “She’s got her daddy’s money, her mamma’s good looks and she’s standing there lookin at me.”
When the woman realizes she married an arrogant ass whose entire superficial value of her was “her mammas good looks and her daddy’s money.” Then later she walks into the bar with some other man and her superficial and shallow minded ex “starts shootin doubles” and becomes the life of the party?
This easy come easy go picture is hardly the reality of the devastation of divorce and the devaluation of people that accompanies superficial living.
So what about musicality? When I listen to CM today and compare it with C&W music of 30 years ago, I can’t help but notice that C&W artists back then had a great deal more creativity, originality and individuality to the melodies of their songs. So did artists of every other music genre for that matter. CW musicians are tight and precise with their music, even sophisticated. But when all your runs, riffs and melodies are basically lockstep cloned arrangements of everyone else’s sound, it amounts to little more than a cheap imitation or just a plagiarized “parrotization.” This applies to the lyrics also.
Yet despite its mindless lyrics and cold mashed potato tunes, CM remains the most powerful music influence in America with 45 million listeners buying over 77 million albums a year. It’s so popular that even the Chinese restaurants are playing it while we eat. Somehow kung po beef and country music don’t mesh well together. Sort of like chocolate covered dill pickles.
Oh well…. I can’t change the CM industry and I can’t change the choice of music our society embraces.
But I can’t help but wonder why the church, the right wing conservatives and the fundamentalists don’t speak up against the CM culture with the same gusto and fervor with which they attacked the rock culture for the past forty years, even shooting some of their own. Country Music / C&W was never any more wholesome than that of the rock music culture. Yet I never heard any preacher say “Country music will send yer kids ta hell!” I have yet to hear of a country music record burnin and the “It’s the words. No. It’s the beat. No It’s the words” argument has never been voiced by the church even though the same elements were always in existence in CM. In fact the beat was in the church’s music before they called it Rock n Roll.
I’m anticipating the day when we see Praise and Worship teams up there in skin tight Wranglers, cowboy hats and Justin boots.
Chuck Hilton
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