Get Back, again

Country music is like a mean girl in your class at school. You try so hard to get her to like you. Well, you probably don't, but I do. And every time I try to do what might make me cool in her eyes, she hastens to tell me that whatever it is I'm doing is so last year. The country genre, from the songwriter's perspective, is ruled by oligarchs who are mostly men hogging the top 50 with songs about, well, you know. Those sex-in-a-pickup-truck songs we hate. Although I couldn't help noticing a great lyric in a Florida Georgia Line song about Friday night at the swimmin' hole / creek / bonfire / cornfield / dirt road / place where country boys get country girls to undress, which is "Victoria's secret ain't a secret no more." Well done.

The genre is also ruled by gatekeepers who want an unforgettably hooky, fresh-yet-comfortable, witty-yet-conversational, relatable-yet-not-cliche thing about something we can all understand that has never been written about that way before, with an irresistible groove and guitar licks that they definitely absolutely have heard a million times before, that is always anything but what I have just written. It reminds me of a scene in "Tootsie," (an old, old movie from the eighties with a lot of truth in it, kids) where Dustin Hoffman is auditioning and the director says "we want somebody taller" and "we want somebody older" and Dustin Hoffman keeps showing that he can be those things and the director finally says "we want somebody else." Oh. Okay.

To be fair, I started listening to country music when I wanted to write country music, and if you had to pass a test of country music literacy, I would fail. (In Yoda voice: "hmm, maybe your problem that is.")

Anyway, I finally wrote a country song last year that They liked, and They liked it a lot; except for the lyric. It was a great lyric, but it was all wrong. Too young, too dated. And isn't that horrible - putting words in the mouth of a young person that are the words of an old person. Yeesh. And it took almost a year for me to get the critique where people finally told me every word and idea that was wrong, and it took five of them to do it, but finally I got it.

Because God is merciful, I was able to re-write it, anticipate three things that They wouldn't like, re-write those, and find a new singer who is a fine replacement for the girl who used to sing my country songs before she went off to get famous.

And so far, in 6 days, my preliminary impression is that They like it. They might even like it a lot. Oh and go click and like Chelsea Stepp because she has a great sound and is a good writer too.



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