Killin Artistry
In which Joe took an a extra month to write twice as much as usual. Warning: excessive amount of adjectives ahead.
The sedate pace of the ballad reflects the seeming regularity of the depicted scene. A blue collar man gets up in the morning and prepares for work. The narrator reflecting on the morning prep refers to it as “a mindless old routine”.
The verse seems to be setting itself up for a morose Springsteenesque reflection on the mind-numbing cyclical rut that is the life of the blue collar worker. Close placement in the album sequencing to the opening track, an uptempo romantic ode to a factory man's courtship would lend credence to this expectation. The bridge starts by unraveling the depth only hinted by the darker guitar chords anchoring the low end of the mix.
It isn’t the humdrum daily routine that is the cause for the glum vibe exuded by the narrator. It is a much scarier and darker reality that the description of innocent morning routine masks. Admitting that although he may seem the same man, daily routines and all, he powerfully shows that merely a shell of his former self remains. Heartbroken with nothing left to live for, he embraces the rut of daily life. A robotic existence isn’t going to heal the hurt, but it provides a numbing salve on the gaping wound.
The year is 1989. The artist is Clint Black. The album entitled Killin’ Time. The song is Nobody’s Home. Just one song on an album stacked top to bottom with timeless hits.
Song is a distinctly different art from literature. Although writing is a crucial element of both of them, song requires additional interpretive layers. Unlike literature, the final draft of the songwriting sheet is only the beginning of the process. However, the commonalities of the two arts are very apparent. Connection via the written word is difficult. Whether in prose or essay form, the disjointed words aim to form into a cohesive narrative that jump off the page. Deploying a variety of similar techniques to achieve this universal purpose is expected.
As humans, we take our vast storehouses of data and utilize that informed decisions. A skill of the human brain is the forming of groupings of data to make informed decisions. Every interaction gets catalogued by the subconscious and stacked on to the piles of data in our brain. This is how tropes get created. The first person to think of a plot twist is creative. After seeing a similar twist or idea a few times, our brains get trained to expect similar patterns in the future. A successful tactic used in both literary and musical arts is the acknowledgment of the audience's expectations and the incorporation of them into the fabric of the art. A talented writer understands that what passed as creative in the past is passé in the present and makes adjustments accordingly. In writing a novel, it may require a unique character arc, or an unusual situation that readers aren’t expecting. In music, it requires deftly balancing the expectations of the audience, along with making subtle changes to maintain freshness. As a body of work grows, audiences will get tired of reheated fare. Navigating this need leads to creative solutions and added layers of depth to the art. The arc of Nobody’s Home creatively works with this idea and presents a elegantly cogent narrative with depth added via the impressive implementation of these literary techniques.
Clint Black took the world by storm in 1989. His easy charm and supple vocals made for a quick rise up the charts. Black was a member of the now famous Class of ’89, a foursome group of young talented artists who ushered in a new era of mainstream popularity for the genre. Eventually he was overshadowed by the worldwide sensation of Garth Brooks and the stone-cold country of Alan Jackson, but in the early part of the ‘90s, Black was on the top of the scene.
Collectively the four represented the popular iterations that have come to represent the genre in the decades since. Garth, although starting out in a traditional vein that was in vogue at the time, soon transitioned to arena rock and pop flavored country. Alan Jackson stayed true to the stolid classic country he started out and is the hero of the modern traditional county fan. The further into the decade, the more Travis Tritt cranked up his guitars and his sound eventually embodied the fusion of country and Southern Rock that the decline of the independent southern rock scene engendered and the mainstream began to adopt in the mid 2000s. By the end of the decade, Black was superseded by all the members of his debut class. Even as late as 2021, when all the popular artists of the ‘80s and ‘90s had long since transitioned into legacy acts, the release of long awaited albums by Alan Jackson and Travis Tritt drew far more buzz then comparably recent output by Black. Even Garth Brooks charted singles in 2021 despite his singular devotion to handicapping his ability to connect with modern audiences. (Amazon Prime exclusives are a terrible idea but that’s a topic for a different time.)
Why exactly does a star fade? In Black’s case the simple narrative is as sketched above. The complexity of reality doesn’t quite align with tightly drawn narratives however. His mid 2000s disappearance is easily explained. Black took time off from his career to spend time with his family. Admirable, but undeniably a dampening move for the long game of his career. Zooming in with an eye towards the charts, especially in comparison to his peers, it seems Black spent most of the ‘90s in a slow decline from his debut. Merely attributing the decline to the growth of the other members of the rarified air at the top of the scene seems logical, but considering the rapidly growing pie of the music industry at the time, there weren’t the limitations that Black would have bumped up against in the belt tightened zero-sum games of the music industry in other decades. In the doller flushed late ‘90s, executives threw money at whoever they thought may even have had the slightest chance at success. A name brand guy like Black was an incredibly valuable asset to a label. They certainly felt so. All the tricks in the book were emplyed to keep him relevant. Poppy power ballad duets with Wynona and Martina McBride, Greatest Hits compilations, box sets and all the radio manipulating schtick labels can muster were all employed during the ‘90s to keep the goose golden. Nonetheless, the star faded.
This is by no means an original thought of mine. I can’t recall where I first saw it put to paper, but the gist of the idea has sat with me for a long while. I have sat on it and pondered. I believe it an explanation of the Clint Black career conundrum.
One of the entertainingly paradoxical facts about the modern music scene is the understood reality that in order to build up cache with labels, many an aspiring artist slogs out a few years as a songwriter. Write a few hits, do your time, and build up connections and once deemed worthy, the reward of a record deal awaits. Ironically, soon after the songwriter transitions into the performing side of the business they will start relying on the writing of the Nashville songwriting teams that they themselves were a part of just a few short years ago. Typically this is interpreted by fans as “selling out” or losing creativity. It’s often true. That is an easy interpretation of the realities of the Nashville world. The flip side is not usually considered by the selfsame blustering gatekeepers. The crucially overlooked bit is that humans are human and have limited time, creativity, and resources. Consider the proverbial indie artist gallantly hustling his way from seedy bar to sleazy establishment, feverishly honing musical skills and instincts. After accumulating a minimal amount of money, but incalculable experience, he begins to put the experiences to paper. He delicately bares his heart in painstakingly slow fashion, agonizing over each syllable and after a few years of work, enough material has been obsessively drafted, critiqued, edited and arranged musically to be produced into a proper debut. Replicating this process is impossible. Granted, a talented writer doesn’t need years of work to curate a list of ten or fifteen well crafted songs but it still requires time. As fame grows and the insatiable demand for newer, fresher content increases, there is an inverse relationship with the amount of time an artist can actually devote to writing. Tours, PR events, interviews and a multitude of dreary-but-needed activities consume valuable time that formerly could have been devoted to writing the next albums material. It is no surprise that, but for rare exceptions, any artist with longevity within the Nashville structure employs a team of professional writers to carefully create lyrics that sound natural to the artist. They will script boozy, woozy Caribbean styled, oceanic songs of longing for Kenny Chesney and heartrending songs of dearly departed love for George Strait or whatever is required for the artist du jour. Skilled writers provide the backbone for artists and it is usually remarkably effective.
On the other hand, artists may feel firmly about continuing the creative process as it was done prior to hitting the big leagues. Sometimes it works, but often a drop off becomes apparent. This is what happened to Clint Black. Although Clint is a remarkably skilled interpreter, when the core material is a few drafts and edits short of a masterpiece, it is difficult to overcome. The uniquely talented writing of his debut as demonstrated by the brilliantly executed literary tour de force of Nobody’s Home steadily became less commonplace and more generic and trite writing became the norm. The layers of depth and subtlety which elevate simple stories into powerful rumination on the human condition demonstrated in the thirty minute runtime of the album required years of work and investment. It is unsurprising and unfortunate that with a firm commitment to replicating the same structure of the creative process albeit- meaning Clint himself wrote the vast majority of his own material- squeezed into a much shorter span of time, the product would suffer. Black and his label persevered valiantly to maintain his high level career, but even the shrewdest marketing can’t create legacy. Nonetheless, his debut album is a remarkable piece of literary and interpretive achievement and ought not to be forgotten and simply lumped together with the “mere” above average discography he has accumulated. Recognizing the masterful melding of perceptive and creatively nuanced writing and top tier interpretation in the art is the deserved perception of the album and the peak of Clint Black. Disregard the thoughts about potential and the facts of how the future played out and bask in the wonder and grandeur of the music.
Joe
Addenda: This was a hard post to bring together and took twice as long as I anticipated. It is a bit longer so I hope it was worth the effort. As my own biggest critic, it seems overwrought, disjointed, and altogether unsatisfactory but I hope the idea comes through. I’ve spent too much time on this to keep deliberating over posting it. I tried experimenting with a slightly different style and I played around with some tenses and I’m unsure how it comes across. Killin time is one of my all time favorite albums for so many reasons and I hope through all the flowery prose (dudes got to keep himself entertained) the ideas came through. I love feedback so feel free to leave a comment down below.