Cheese 'n' Twang

Listening to Brad Paisley's Mud on the Tyres on the way into work this morning. You end up, or I end up, with a big grin on your face. It's cheesy, but it's high quality cheese, and I forgive a lot of cheese, given the quality of his guitar playing.

Listening to country, anyway, you've got to get over yourself if you have an aversion to cheese, just because it's not cool. You also have to get over hearing mention of God and Jaysus, and that's a good thing. Because being cool isn't everything, and I realised many years ago that I would rather listen to someone who sings about Jesus than someone who thinks he is Jesus. Hence my rejection of 20-something year old boys singing rock, and my embrace of mostly 30-something women and a few men singing country.

And honestly, Brad Paisley has my respect, not just for his guitar twang, but for his lyrics too, which are right on the money. I love this opening of "Celebrity":

Someday I'm gonna be famous, do I have talent, well no
These days you don't really need it thanks to reality shows
Can't wait to date a supermodel, can't wait to sue my dad
Can't wait to wreck a Ferrari on my way to rehab

'Cause when you're a celebrity
It's adios reality...

"Can't wait to sue my dad." Hilarious.

It's when country songs take you inside your life and reflect it back at you with deceptive ease that you begin to appreciate the craft. A lot of the time this happens in terms of complete heartbreak and loss, the bits and pieces of things left lying around the house to remind you of someone; or it's songs like Julie Roberts' "Break Down Here", with the minutiae of coughing engines and running out of cigarettes. Or it can be sheer, unadulterated fromage:

Ain't nothin' like watchin' a bunch of young'ns
Run screamin' through the sprinkler in their little bare feet
And ain't nothin' like finding twenty dollars
In the pocket of the britches that you wore last week

And if you can get over the fact that you'd be embarrassed if one of your mates was in the car with you, that little bit of cheese 'n' twang get set you up for the day.

Also listened this morning to Gretchen Wilson's record, and it too is very good. She's obviously paid her dues in Nayushville as a session singer, and there's a lot of self-written/co-written songs on this debut. Sony are pitching her as a party girl, with tracks like "Redneck Woman" and "I'm Here for the Party" opening it up. But if you go away from it and come back from, say, track 4, there's a different atmosphere. Cheese comes along in the form of some awful country rap on one track, but that's forgivable in an otherwise strong set. It's what the skip button was invented for.

Final track is an oddity, an obviously autobiographical thing called "Pocahontas Proud" - all about how she's the biggest thing to come out of her home town and she's determined not to let people down. Finishes with an excellent guitar coda, but it struck me that there's a huge gulf between that and one of Matraca Berg's better songs.
There's one she wrote about a waitress called "Good Old Girl," and the chorus goes,

She's a good ol' girl
And she won't let you down
She's got a picture of Elvis
When he came to her town

So there we have the paradigmatic small town girl, whose closest brush with fame and fortune came when Elvis passed through many years before; in contrast with Gretchen singing about herself leaving Pocahontas, Illinois, and heading off to Nashville to make her home town proud. Two sides of fame, I guess, with Brad Paisley's "Celebrity" poking fun at both of them, with a bit of Parmesan sprinkled over the top.