The Musings Behind the Music- part 2
Do you actually live where you want? Tim McGraw is a curmudgeon and Kenny Chesney gets deep.
This is the second part of a three part series discussing philosophical ideas surrounding specificity and universality in country music. You can find the first part here: 1
The subconscious undercurrent of humanity is messily expressed in music. Music tells the underlying story of the culture. Country music in particular has always considered itself to be a storytelling genre that reflects a specific culture. It tells real stories. Tales of the blue collar worker. Tales of the forgotten. Tales of the poor. The story of the south. It tells the joyous stories of innocent rural teenage freedom, love, and romance. It also opens up the closets and reveals the dependencies, depression, and desperate acts that are hidden behind the closed doors of small town America. Oddly enough, the genre is very successful across the nation. It is odd because it primarily focuses on the rural living experience that most people in this country do not grow up with and have not since the 1920s. Yet, the stories still resonate widely.
There is a very interesting data set that polled thousands of Americans about their ideal preferences for living places. It also asked where they actually live. The options were large cities, large city suburbs, small city, small city suburb, small towns, or rural. Generally, the percentage of people that wished to live in a particular style of living roughly hewed close to the percentage that actually did. The outliers were rural and big city living. Apparently, there’s a huge chunk of people that do wish to live a more country lifestyle, but reside in the big cities.
It would be easy to attribute this to a neanderthalian reactionary impulse, a grass is greener on the other side argument. A petulant “I don’t like it where I currently am and therefore I wish to do the exact opposite.” Granted this is a component, however I think it is at most a small component. When you live in a particular setting, the flaws of that setting are very clear to you. The flaws of the exact opposite of the setting are not as easily identifiable. For example, the density of the urban areas is very noticeable and would bother someone. They may tell themselves that they wish to move out to the country to avoid the urban density. However, they don’t know just how tough it would be to have to drive 15 minutes to the local grocery to pick up the smallest ingredient. Each side masks the flaws of the other. I am sure there’s a technical term for this type of bias, but I don’t know it. These biases explain part of the picture and for the sake of intellectual honesty, I felt it necessary to get them out of the way before delving into what I think is the more important reason.
In my eyes, the perception of the small town experience is formed heavily by the pre-technological era, or at least a less technological era. The city has always been where innovation happens first. Naturally it was the place in which this technologically driven individualization reared its head first and strongest. The small towns can be monolithic and they can be constricting. The axioms that define social interaction and boundaries of acceptable behavior lean towards the old fashioned and staidly small c conservative side. Contrast that with the hyper quick and innovative axioms by which cities govern themselves. Change happens slower in the small town. As a result, small towns also possess a more tightly knit community. The ravages of atomized individuality haven’t struck these smaller communities as hard. We miss that tribal feeling of belonging to a tight knit community. Naturally, we link that longing to the settings which it is most commonplace. This would explain why people have a collective fondness for the rural experience, despite the fact that it is very clear, for financial and many other reasons, that it is not their ideal setting. Humans tend to settle down where it makes the most sense for them, and they will mourn and wax nostalgia for what they gave up to get there. I think this is why the music of Bruce Springsteen hits so hard. He peeled back the layers of sepia tinged nostalgia for the small town in the good old days and showed the ravages of modernity ripping apart the communities that had until that point withstood intact.
Country music has a strong focus on the small town experience. It would seem to be exclusionary talking excessively about Friday night football and main streets. Whole towns where everyone knows each other's name may exist, but the vast majority of listeners do not belong to such communities. A city dwelling, irreligious person who isn’t a fan of football seemingly is left out.
The key to unlocking the universal appeal lies underneath these external trappings. The songs feature the touchstone of a particular subculture, but take a look at the underlying feelings. The feeling of camaraderie when the whole town comes down to see their good old boys Friday night football game is not particularly dissimilar from a suburban soccer meet where parents come from all over to root for their child's team. In fact even in a dramatically different setting, such as a whole group of online friends joining a friend's twitch stream and spamming the chat for every headshot, the fundamental emotions of camaraderie and moral support is the same. It taps into that same base communal appeal and sense of belonging that the idea of living in generic small town Americana does. There is pride in the place because there is a sense of belonging to the place and communities therein. We need that belonging. We crave it. Country music subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) provides it.
Two songs that come to mind when I think about this idea are by two of the most prolific country artists of the 2000s; Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney. Tim McGraw has a fun song called Back When. It belongs to a corny humorous side of country music that was very popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is written simply. McGraw lists off a variety of phrases and ideas that used to be more commonplace back in the day. A comedic twist is added with puns and wordplay. Dad lines like “And crack’s what you were doing/ when you were cracking jokes” or back in my day rants about extolling the virtues of a simple sitdown meal with the family (fried bologna sandwich with mayo and tomato) are littered throughout the song. It's a fun twangier listen than McGraw's usual fare which adds an appropriate atmosphere for the backwards looking tongue in cheek anthem.
Many of the lines and ideas expressed in the song are country identity based, but fundamentally surround a protagonist who feels he's from a different time. Regardless of whether we are rural or suburban, our inner reactionary perks up and relates to the song. Even the most forward thinking of us feels certain things were done better in the past. The feeling a cosmopolitan suburbanite gets from listening to Back When syncs up perfectly with griping how iPhones were better when they had the headphone jack. Take that universality and meld it alongside the cheery nostalgia for rural Americana that exists in the collective subconscious and you have a hit.
Another great example of these principles at play is the Kenny Chesney song Where I Grew Up. Not to be confused with his late 1990s rural life extolling hit Back Where I Come From (for what it's worth, a jam of a song that Chesney sells with remarkable cheer), this song is off the album Hemingway‘s Whiskey released in 2010. I consider that album to be a top three Chesney album with a good argument to be made for the top spot. In the song, he analyzes his life and highlights formative moments. Chesney is at his best when he is reflective. There's a certain emotive quality in his voice when he delves into the past, whether exultant, melancholy, or nostalgic, retrospective Kenny just hits differently.
He asks the question in this song that many of us do when our lives have started to accumulate mileage. When did I truly become the person that I am? Different possibilities are raised. Getting measured in the pantry door as a kid, and partying out on the riverbank with a cold one are discarded as important in the life of the country boy protagonist, but not formative enough. He finally settles on a few key moments each of which touch on different elements surrounding the fragility of life. Firstly, the day his grandfather passed away and he saw his mother cry at the funeral. Seemingly, this was the moment that popped the bubble of a little boy and showed him the fragility of life first hand.
Secondly, when he got in a car accident as an excitable teenager. This is the moment that the fragility of life affected him personally. After miraculously surviving, he finds faith and prays. Others may thank fate or chalk it up to astrology, but the impulse to thank something bigger after getting a new lease on life is pretty standard.
The third and final moment Chesney reflects on is the first big fight he had with his wife. (For a guy who was only married for around fifteen minutes, he has a great grasp on domestic life.) His head and heart battle it out whether he should chase after her, apologize, and make amends. His head wins because his heart, having gone through the aforementioned character building moments, implicitly understands the fragility of life. I don’t think much explanation is needed to appreciate the relatability of this song. You don’t have to be a country boy to get it. In fact, the song itself focuses on the deeper and universal moments and proclaims them more essential than the rural affiliated activities mentioned. He doesn’t say that drinking a beer on the riverside is not an important component of his youth. It clearly was, and is for many. However, he decides to take a further step back and focus on bigger broader ideas. It is to the benefit of everyone, I’d say.
In part three of this series, we will discuss why it is the case that country music specifically became home to this odd mix of universal ideals expressed via insular specifics. We also discuss what I consider to be the number one example where these ideas rear their head. Hope you’ve enjoyed the series thus far.
Until next time,
Joe
I will link part 3 when it goes live here:2
If you’ve liked what we do here, please consider giving a like or commenting. Share it with a friend!