5.18.2008

Take a Breath Of That Country Air

Oh man, the American Country Music Awards are on tonight and I can't stop watching. It's like some hideous car wreck only everyone involved is an over groomed phony. A terrible pile-up strewn with mutilated bodies with fake tans, bleached teeth and highlighted hair.

And that's just on the guys.

It's a total embarrassment. I mean Rascal Flatts? These guys are country? What country? Fruitsylvania? Come on. Willie Nelson would be spinning in his grave if he were dead and not just some old pot-smoking lecherous creepy granddad in a trailer somewhere.

Anyway, so I watched like half hour of it. The awards show. I had a sleeping baby on my arm and couldn't move and there was nothing else on and come on! Gimme a break! It was research for my new book: Country Music Is Stinky. It's about contemporary country music. And how it is stinky.

I saw Garth Brooks run through a medley of his "hits." Only I didn't recognize two-thirds of them. It was like bad karaoke, watching Garth up there (seriously, it was embarrassingly bad) but it reminded me of something: I freaking hate Garth Brooks.

There was a time there where his music was everywhere. It seems like any youth trip we took we would be forced to listen to him, all while being told how great country music was and how you kids' music these days was terrible and country music had morals and blahblah. And this was pre-iPod, so we couldn't just slap on some headphones and tune old Garthy-boy out. If you wanted to do something like that you needed a portable CD player and those things were roughly the size of your head and skipped if you sneezed or looked at it wrong. Also bread cost a nickel and we had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow all while being chased by hungry wolves and Cossacks and Huns. I lost my brother to scarlet lung and my mother developed the whooping cough in the trenches of the Great War. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Anyway, so this country pop stuff is stinky. It gives me hives and makes me think bad thoughts. It makes me stabby. I must go listen to the new Old 97's album to cleanse my pallete. You should probably do the same. Yee-haw!

2 comments:

rose said...

congratulations on surviving a half hour of listening to that crap. whenever i'm forced to listen, i turn into a whiner.
partially because in country pop music they whine a lot - it seeps into my brain. ugh, hate it!
(and i admit there was a time when i was big on the garth. but we don't talk about it.)

chanel said...

thank you.

and I kind of want to strangle every YW who uses her ipod at activities- uh, you can stand to listen to us lame boring leaders for the next 1 1/2 hrs, at least we're not pumping you with Garth Brooks and telling you he has morals! thanks.