All of the songs referenced below link to the videos!
I came up out of
the water / Raised my hands up to the Father
Gave it all to
Him that day / Felt a new wind kiss my face
These are the opening lyrics to a Rascal
Flatts song called "Changed", and you usually won’t hear lyrics like that in pop music. As Brad Paisley put in song, “You’re not
supposed to say the word cancer in a song / And tellin’ folks Jesus is the
answer can rub ‘em wrong.” Pop and rock
music is replete with many a message, but Jesus is rarely mentioned, if
ever. Christian pop and rock, of course, mentions
Jesus all the time, but that is what that music is all about! Where else in secular music can you
hear songs about Jesus? The answer is in
that same Brad Paisley song, in the very next verse: “It ain’t hip to sing about tractors, trucks,
little towns and mama / Yeah that might be true / But this is country music….
And we do!” It’s probably the main reason
I keep coming back… but not the only one.
Jason
Michael Carroll, another country singer, has a song called “Alyssa Lies” about
a man whose little girl is upset over a fibbing classmate, but when he presses
his daughter, she elaborates that Alyssa lies about the bruises she tries to
hide. Deciding to do something about it,
the narrator is set to tell the school when he hears the news, and then has to
tell his daughter, in a double entendre for the title, that “Alyssa lies with
Jesus because there was nothing anyone would do.” While pop group REM sings about “Losing MyReligion” and pop singer Joan Osborne ponders “What if God was one of us / Just
a slob like one of us,” and an old John Lennon song implores us to “imagine
there’s no heaven” to critical raves, country singer Carrie Underwood sings for
Jesus to take the wheel, and Lady Antebellum has a song named "Hello World" where the singer
declares “Every day I drive by a little white church / It’s got these white
crosses like angels in the yard / Maybe I should stop on in and say a prayer /
Talk to God like He is there / Oh, I know He’s there / Yeah, I know He’s
there.” For the most part, Country is
Christian, with the obvious exception of the Dixie Chicks.
Yet
the funny thing is, that’s only one side of country music. Brantly Gilbert hits upon another side of
country music with his song “Country Must Be Country Wide”, where he sings “We
bow our heads before we eat / Before we start our day / Before we fall asleep /
‘Cause in God we Trust / And we see what’s wrong / And we know what’s right / And
ol’ Hank said it all / When he said Country
Folks Can Survive!” He hit upon the
concept of integrity and character, something SORELY missing from pop and rock,
and rising above the baser, more immoral elements of this fallen society; he
hits upon pride in how we live and what we stand for, and in America too. You just don’t find much of that in other
types of popular music. “I still say
‘Yes, ma’am' to my Mama / How ‘bout you?” Eric Church asks in one of his songs,
and then sings of his integrity: “If I
shake your hand, look you in the eye, you can bet your a**, it’ll be the
truth.” There’s a bit of
conservative/Ann Coulter rakishness that cuts through all the political correctness
garbage we’ve been made to suffer in lyrics like that, and I find myself really
liking it. “I don’t need baggy clothes or rings
in my nose to be cool,” he states defiantly in the same song. Expanding to patriotism, Church then sings “I
cover my heart with my hat when they fly that red, white, and blue / Just like
my Daddy taught me / How ‘bout you?”
This is something echoed in many a country song, such as Brad Paisley’s
“This is Country Music” I referenced above, when he sings “And if there’s
anyone who still has pride in the memory of those who died / Defending the old
red, white, and blue / This is country music… and we do.”
In
fact, these two songs – “This is Country Music” by Brad Paisley and “How ‘Bout You” by Eric Church – seem to tap into everything I love about country music…
as well as everything I’m not all that personally crazy about. I like a person who will cut through all the
bull and tell it like it really is, be it man or woman, but these same people
are also the type to get a little rowdy, who “like to drink a cold one on the
weekend and get a little loud.” Eric
Church exclaims, “Yeah, give me a crowd that’s redneck and loud and I’ll raise
the roof.” It’s this type of country,
with Toby Keith singing about his “Red Solo Cup”, Garth Brooks singing about
his “Long Neck Bottle” and “Friends in Low Places,” and Eric Church taking time
out to “drink a little drink / smoke a little smoke” – that makes me just a
little uncomfortable. My friends and family would be the first to say I’m not at all the
“redneck and loud” type. I mean, I love
the take-no-prisoners attitude and flash in the song “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” by Big & Rich (with a BIG & RICH thank you and shout out to BrynEnsomhet for the cool Multifandom Vid on this video link!) but you’d
have to be denser than a bag of peanuts not to comprehend what that song is
really all about. “I’m a thoroughbred /
That’s what she said / In the back of my truck bed / And I was getting’ buzzed
on suds on some back country road / We were flyin’ high / Fine as wine / Having
ourselves a Big & Rich time / And I was goin’ just as far as she’d let me
go / But her evaluation / Of my cowboy reputation / Had me beggin’ for
salvation all night long / So I took her out giggin’ frogs / Introduced her to
my old bird dog / And sang her every Willie Nelson song I could think of / and
WE MADE LOVE!” Despite the lively
delivery – throughout this whole rambunctious song - they’re stepping quite far across
the line in the morality department. I’m
still not too sure I particularly like that side of country music. I even REALLY LIKED what I’d seen of John Rich
on Celebrity Apprentice, but I’m not
sure he can make the claim, as he does in this song, that he’s “the only John
Wayne left in this town”. I mean, does
this look like John Wayne to you?
It’s
not just the men. The women get into the
act as well. “Some people look down on
me,” Gretchen Wilson sings in her hit country song “Redneck Woman”, but then
adds “But I don’t give a rip / I’ll stand barefoot on my front yard with a baby
on my hip!” Later, she gushes
“Victoria’s Secret / Well their stuff’s real nice” but then expounds “But I can
buy the same damn thing on a Wal-Mart shelf half price / And still look sexy,
just as sexy, as those models on TV / No, I don’t need no designer tag to make
my man want me.” You go girl!
The
truth is, that’s not me (or, as the country folks say “That ain’t me”). I’m glad they’re proud, and cut through that
liberal do-whatever-you-please cloud, and have a toughness about themselves
that’s rather appealing. “The scars on
my knuckles match these scuffs on these cowboy boots / An’ there’s a whole lot
more like me” Eric Church sings in “How ‘Bout You?” That’s all well and good
for him, but that’s not really me.
I can sort of relate to these lyrics:
“I punch the clock tryin’ to make it to the top / How ‘bout you? / I
ain’t got no blue-blood trust fund I can dip into / Yeah, I wish Uncle Sam
would give a damn ‘bout the man who’s collar is blue / But if he don’t, hell,
I’ll make it on my own / How ‘bout you?”
This IS me, but only to a certain extent. I "punch the clock tryin' to make it to the top" and "I ain't got no blue-blood trust fund I can dip into", but my collar is not really blue. I'm rather suburban. And if Uncle Sam don't "give a damn", I worry whether or not I can make it on my own.
I
think the difference is that this side of county is more like Sons of Anarchy and Duck Dynasty, and if I had to pick from a TV show, I'm much
more like the characters on Fraiser
and The Big Bang Theory, but without
the money and clout. In fact, there’s
very, very little of me that’s like Sons
of Anarchy. I even hate to admit it, because this goes to the heart of the
classic liberal male, but I’m quite a bit more “metrosexual” than the kind of
man described in these country music lyrics.
I mean, when Kellie Pickler sings her humorous ditty about the “ThingsThat Never Cross a Man’s Mind”, describing the classic example of the strong
country man, it doesn’t really describe me at all! I HAVE thought “That joke is too dirty, that
steak is too thick / Ain’t no way in the world I’ll ever finish it / That car
is too fast, this beer is too cold / And watching all this football is sure
getting old.” Maybe that’s the
difference. I don’t drink beer and I
don’t watch football. Does that mean I'm not really country, or not a real man?
I
appreciate the deep-seeded faith in Christ and the American pride and the
integrity and semi-moral character, but truthfully, I’m pretty much a geek
through and through.
And
you know what? That’s really fine by me!
And I AM still country... well, as much as a "Sci Fi Christian Guy" can be!
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