Shelton’s hillbilly night out with his city slicker friend is no different from Paisley’s video-conference with Japanese country bands - it’s just celebrating it from a different angle. Except to say this: between Shelton, Love and Theft, and Brad Paisley, there seems to be a trend in 2010 of pushing country outwards and bringing outsiders in that I haven’t seen since the early days of Big & Rich and Bubba Sparxxx. I’m aware that self-justifying arguments based on infinite recursion have no place in intelligent discourse about music, but I’m too busy yelling “Yee-Haw!” to worry about that, to be honest.
Not that I’m planning on joining the party, mind - I had a rednecktomy when I was 8 to remove my hillbilly bone - but it’s times like this that I miss it.Īlex Ostroff: There is no rational justification for my love of this song besides the theory put forth by the lyrics of the song itself. This is basically a big “Yeah, we are like that, and so what?” bird flip of a tune, not caring what you may or may not think about their choice of aural pleasure, simply pitying you for not getting involved in the party they’re oh so clearly enjoying. 40 years after Atwater’s Southern Strategy, after Clinton and Bush Jr, after Katrina, and Obama pushing everything back up north - after Nashville moving its offices to New York and LA, we could make a list about how country is now post-geography, or at least how the geographic center has shifted.ĭoug Robertson: Some types of music do their best to avoid the stereotypes and clichés associated with the genre, but country seems to positively revel in the sort of lazy assumptions about both the style and the sort of person who would be expected to listen to it.
It seems to have come from discussions of what is real America, but considering most of country’s listeners are from the west or midwest, the free floating nostalgia seems to engage in an ideological function - so one wonders what the function is. There are more or less dangerous versions of it - Josh Turner’s “White Noise” moves much closer to real racism, while Tim McGraw’s “Southern Voices” has a smarmy politician’s escape valve. loud southern pride, as it works against New York or the east, in the last couple of years in Nashville has made me incredibly nervous because I am not quite sure what it signifies. Michaelangelo Matos: I’ve got a friend from around Nashville/He ain’t never heard of Mink DeVille/He ain’t never been south of Lebanon/I should have looked at a map before I wrote this song.Īnthony Easton: This surplus of southern pride, esp. But c’mon: you expect me to believe your New York friend has never been to Brooklyn? Y’all should really take a look at a map sometime. All in all though, this isn’t half-bad, and it’s nice to hear country pop that leans heavier to the country than to the pop. No bonus points for the Obama-ish couple that might as well be holding up “TOKEN” signs above the otherwise pasty crowd. It’s also a shame that the sense of inclusion that’s inherent in the lyrics does not extend to the hackneyed video, with its Blake-and-Trace-crash-the-upper-crust Trading Places vibe. This is no small distinction, and “redneck” is not a dirty word it’s a shame they didn’t embrace it. The signal points in the song (the F-1 pickup, Conway Twitty, bubbas, dodging cowpies underfoot, collards, Skynyrd-y electric guitar, dick jokes) are not so much indicative of a hillbilly, they are the province of the redneck. John Seroff: Got a bone to pick with Blake and Trace: as a native Tennessean myself, I’m a bit choosy about how Southern folk are labeled, whether by out or insiders. Pharrell WilliamsĪnd we conclude All-Country Monday the only way we know how - Trace Adkins, in a hat, having a snifter.