N.B.: This is today’s second post.
Among the many, many, many things I don’t understand in this world is why gay men hate country music. Two out of every three online profiles, under “music I don’t like,” list country music, usually along with some witheringly disparaging commentary.
I can only assume that these people have never heard real country music. I don’t think there’s any other music that so eloquently expresses the laughable despair of the human condition. (And remember that I not only compose for the musical theater but also make money singing Bach, Mozart, and all those other guys, so I know what I’m talking about when it comes to music.)
Take, for instance, the following lyric (the song is by Hoyt Axton and Renee Armand), the chorus of which has been my world view since I was six:
Rain’s comin’ down and the roof won’t hold ‘er.
Well, I lost my job and I feel a little older.
Car won’t run and our love’s grown colder.
Maybe things’ll get a little better in the mornin’.
Maybe things’ll get a little better.
The clothes need washin’ and the fire won’t start.
Kids all cryin’ and you’re breakin’ my heart.
Whole damn place is fallin’ apart,
But maybe things’ll get a little better in the mornin’.
Maybe things’ll get a little better.
Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get?
Boney fingers.
I’ve been broke as long as I remember.
Well, I get a little money, I gotta run and spend ‘er.
When I try to save it, pretty woman come and take it,
Sayin’ maybe things’ll get a little better in the mornin’.
Maybe things’ll get a little better.
Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get?
Boney fingers.
Grass won’t grow and the sun’s too hot.
The whole darn world is goin’ to pot.
Might as well like it, ’cause you’re all that I got.
Maybe things’ll get a little better in the mornin’.
Maybe things’ll get a little better.
Work your fingers to the bone, what do you get?
Boney fingers.
I defy you to tell me that isn’t as accurate an encapsulation of how hard it is to live on this earth as anything Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde ever wrote.
I love country music. I can sing along with Garth and Reba, and I had a fabulous time on the treadmill last week with Brooks & Dunn’s Greatest Hits.
So there!
(But I don’t know the words to Jeff Strykyer’s lastest Country hit, “Pop you in the….)
Oh, my God! Of course! How could I forget “Pop You in the Pooper”?
Amen. I’ve long maintained that there’s no genre of current popular music that’s better suited to great story telling than country/bluegrass. Maybe rap, actually, but that’s it.
…and they don’t come much better than this, either.
Greetings,
I love your blog and I love you. The country music thing was the tipoff.