10) The Dixie Chicks, 1998-1999. For this lightning span, the Dixie Chicks didn't feel so much like the leading act of their era but the greatest country act of all time, both albums top-to-bottom like the Beatles or Nirvana, not even from the same universe as what surrounded them. What's surprising is how consistently they stayed on message: set again Neo-Trad arrangements, narratives recounting over and over the escape from heartland traditional female domesticity, with its increasingly violent depradations. In that regard, "Wide Open Spaces," "Ready To Run," and the infamous "Goodbye Earl" are the exact same song, set at different moments (pre-wedding, during wedding, and after-wedding). Their lone great original from after this period, "Long Time Gone," completes the cycle; ending with a late-life scene of recovered rural domestic bliss, what's generally passed over about the song is that—given there's no clear indication against assuming the narrator is the same gender as the vocalist, a norm we generally take as given—the recovered domesticity isn't heterosexual. The other surprising thing is how suddenly the period of aesthetic surplus ended, and utterly: done in by creative exhaustion (perhaps) and brutal, organized conservative backlash (certainly), the Dixe Chicks released almost 20 great songs in 19 months and almost none before or after.
9) At least once every Sunday on the American Country Countdown, the host says, with the air of an optimistic, slightly glottal shaman, "music is people coming together." Every week, I think to myself, so's lynching.
8) "As Good As I Once Was," Toby Keith. When Shania perfects her skill at sounding conversational in songs, we suspect it's because she can't sing. When Toby does the same, we suspect it's because he likes talking. It just so happens they're the two towering figures of the post-Garth era, or so I sometimes suppose. Either way, that little melodic thing he does at the "I used to be hell on wheels" middle eight—as if, per the story, it's all he can do to gather his aching sack of bones and take it to the bridge one more time—makes me shake.
7) Sara Evans, 2000-2005. She's been kicking around since '96, but she came into her own (own what? I've always wondered. Well, own fame, own million bucks, whatever) by operating the Culture Machine with brutal simplicity. At exactly the moment no one could have known was the start of the Chick's vanishing, Evans, despite her less gifted vocal manner, released a single so shamelessly Chicks manqué it was practically bold—"Born To Fly"—replicating everything from the melody and harmony arrangements to the theme. Upon successful döppelganging of the Chick's signifiers, she commenced to driving the social stance steadily rightward: keeping the hooks, losing everything that might bother the core audience or frighten the horses. This is a singer, remember, who gives interviews about how she doesn't care to tour because her favorite thing is cooking her hubbie dinner; recall as well that one of her songs begins "When I look at you I see the souls of our unborn children." In short, Evans is George W. Bush's Dixie Chicks—dating the two acts historically is terrifying in its precision. Nonetheless and as always, this doesn't make the music better or worse. She ain't as good as they once was, but for all that's depressingly exemplary and conceptually pathetic about her trajectory and general deal, she's been one of the most reliable Nashpoppers of the Bush era, and you can't take that away from her.
6) "Summer Girl," Jessica Andrews. She got screwed on the release date: end of June, meaning it would be at least September by the time it could gather any momentum, guaranteeing it wouldn't. Drop this in April and it could have been the feelgood s—...aw, you know. I love it anyway, and would if all it had to offer was the first four phrases: "I drive an army jeep, my bumper sticker reads Drink Til He's Cute, that's what I'm gonna do." What the song never wastes its time saying: Hey, other country song about bumper stickers and the army, fuck y'all.
5) "Good Ride Cowboy," Garth Brooks. Garth's elegy for rodeo'n'western star Chris Le Doux may not be as charming as their old duet "Whatcha Gonna Do With A Cowboy?" (not much is) but it is Garth's best song in the rowdy style of the post-Garth era (during which he's made a surprising number of lovely ballads: "You Move Me" and "Belleau Wood" foremost among'em). As an odd historical footnote, it shares with the new Princess Superstar disc a repeated misuse of Nike's slogan—for her a sardonic critique, for him a raucous hilarity, though the loveliest part of this song is how the titular compliment stores its rodeo admiration not in the praise (you gotta say "good ride" to everybody, after all) but in the honorific. Not everyone gets to be a cowboy. Le Doux, by the way, is well worth stopping at the next big truck stop you pass; you can find his tapes right by the register.
4) "XXL," Keith Anderson. An entirely shameless song about being fat; a perfectly by-the-numbers boogie with more gusto in the vocal than anything you'll likely hear this year.
3) "California Girls," Gretchen Wilson. On an album which mainly serves to clarify, for those easily confused by the nature of journalistic first-response teams and their necessary fantasies, that Gretchen Wilson is pretty much like every other three-quarters good countrybilly chick, this is the track that jumps off the disc (along with the Haggard duet). It's short, fast, and seems to imagine that Paris Hilton is from the West Coast. Is this true? I think of her as being New York, but—. Can international jetset stars for whom every third hotel is home, and ubiquity their only salient quality, be said to be from anywhere? Doesn't Paris Hilton make "California" seem like an irrelevant category, an outmoded mechanism for producing a certain kind of seductive vacuity which is now grown in tanks in the back room of the general concept "fame"? Isn't Gretchen's appeal not that she's from wherever the fuck she's from, but that she still believes in regionalism at all? That's hot. Anyway, Gretchen Wilson doesn't like Paris Hilton and has a backhanded compliment for Dolly Parton, which is to say that she has bad taste, except, occasionally, in songs.
2) Kenny Chesney is the worst thing ever. Worst. Thing. Ever.
1) "Redneck Yacht Club," Craig Morgan. Before playing this on Sunday (#2 on ACC), the host played an audio collage of various songs deploying the word "redneck." Strangely, he overlooked Sammmy Kershaw's "Queen of my Double-Wide Trailer," which may be the best of them, not the least because the eponymous love object describes her new beau as "the Charlie Daniels of the torque wrench." Never fear; our hero gets her back, "dang her black heart and her pretty red neck." If Kershaw has any competition, it's this new song, an entry into the microgenre wherein good ol' boys act out their own vivid version of superclassy institutions (I think of Travis Tritt's "Country Club" as the touchstone, though "Friends In Low Places" looms large). The care and surprise with which this song is written are sort of shocking (Ben likes the elegance with odd brand names and details, the way he fits in "15 SPF"; I like the fact that the third line of each verse is designed to have two syllables, each stressed; there's plenty more to love); a good year for drinking songs.
Posted by jane at October 20, 2005 01:53 PM | TrackBack