The Wily Filipino

Your New Favorite Song.

Whenever I ask my students -- usually the ones in anthropology, since I almost always toss in an ethnography about music for them to read -- what music they couldn't stand hearing, and almost always the answer would be "country." It isn't hard to see why: the Twang-und-Drawl gets in the way, for starters, and I can't see how suburban kids would ever be enamored of the whole jacket / boots / hat image. It's a tough sell, and I'm sure they have visions of line-dancers whenever they hear "country music." (That or Toby Keith.) And I usually respond with "How about Patsy Cline?" and most of them have no idea what I'm talking about.

Through the years I've listened to a good amount of "real" country music, and I think there's something to be said about music to be listened to experientially -- "I wanna hold your hand" or "I like it like that, she working that back, I don't know how to act" most everyone understands, but not necessarily "The bottle let me down."

Lyle Lovett might not be "country" per se -- sorry, I couldn't think of a good segue -- but he draws deep from that idiom, and even on a slightly adult-contemporary song like the one below (picture sarcasm-quotes around "adult-contemporary," by the way), the sentiment is still pure Hank Williams Sr.

Lyrically, he seems to commit the error of the unforgiveable cliche -- but man, does it work here:

Now there is nothing so deep as the ocean
And there is nothing so high as the sky
And there is nothing so unwavering as a woman
When she's already made up her mind

Hear it (6.9 mb).

Posted by the wily filipino at September 4, 2004 05:07 PM