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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | Re: age, and reviews of bad country albums |
| Date | Thu, 19 May 2005 23:44:11 -0500 |
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Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 05:56:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: Michael Bennett <mrhonorama@ameritech.net>
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: age, and reviews of bad country albums
Message-ID: <20050519125626.64367.qmail@web81405.mail.yahoo.com>
Two things --
In his excellent essay collection, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa
Puffs, Chuck Klosterman does a great piece on country
lyrics. Klosterman gives them props, noting how many
country songs really deal with the trials and trevails
of the common man (and woman).
That's absolutely uncanny, Mike. I had Klosterman's essay from *Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs* in the back of my mind when I was defending country lyrics.
It's a great book, by the way. One of the essays in it almost made me want to start watching MTV's *The Real World*. One of the hallmarks of a great writer is when he can sell you on something you've never actually seen but would normally avoid like the plague.
I certainly concur w/Greg as to the state of lyrics in
power pop generally. Perhaps, however, it could be
argued that expressing love is one of the most
difficult things for people to do well. Thus, power
pop lyrics that fall back on facile simplicity and
cliche are actually truly reflective of the general
state of inarticulateness that most men have in
talking about love. Accordingly, power pop lyrics are
actually a frank portrayal of how men deal with love.
Boy, if I can throw post-modernism in there somewhere,
I think I have a thesis proposal.
Actually, what is quintessentially male about your thesis is that it reflects our gender's boundless capacity for rationalizating our shortcomings in terms of what women expect from us. ;-)
Gregory Sager
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