Did Your Daddy Let You Drive?
The other day my friend said she hates "FM"/"modern" country. It made me sad.
Everyone is always saying they hate “new” country or “FM” country. It is sad. People just hurt themselves by not listening to this music.
This post was more or less written for my friend Kamala, and for this other person, J., who I don’t know well, but goes to my workout place, and who was agreeing with Kamala that FM country is terrible when it is actually the best music as is evidenced by this small sampling of some of my current favorite songs:
When It Rains It Pours, Luke Combs. I was headed to a Luke Combs concert a few months ago and some other concertgoers were blasting this out of a van stopped in traffic next to our cab a few miles from the venue. It is his best and most popular song, but he sang it first at his concert, not last, because he knows how many other good songs he has. If you don’t like this song, about a guy who gets dumped but then sees his luck turn around in improbable and amazing ways, there is something wrong with you.
Shut Up, Shelia, Ashley McBryde. While waiting for her grandmother to die, a woman tells a relative’s religious girlfriend to fuck off with the God stuff. The chorus is one of the more emotionally powerful pieces of words, music and singing I have ever heard.
We don't sing "Amazing Grace"
We don't read from the Bible
We just go about letting go in our own way
We drink and we get high
We laugh at the wrong times
We don't cry, we don't pray
Oh, we don't cry, we don't prayGOOD STUFF.
Every Night Every Morning, Maddie & Tae. A sweet song about long-term love. A real tearjerker.
Cruise, Florida Georgia Line. A song about driving around with a hot girl in a “Chevy with a lift kit,” but when I hear this big radio hit from 2012 I think of me driving around in my old, now-dead Yaris with Merle, my old now-dead blue heeler. RIP Merle, you made me want to roll my windows down, and cruise.
Leave the Pieces, The Wreckers. Michelle Branch, who just made headlines for hitting her boyfriend, who probably deserved it, paired up with Jessica Harp, her backup singer from Hotel Paper for this 2006 hit about someone who is not that into you but somehow won’t break up with you either. Has that ever happened to any of you? Not me! Nothing like that would ever happen to me, I am way too good for something like that to happen to me. I still like this song, even though obviously the narrative is not personally relatable.
Bluebird, Miranda Lambert. This song is about how Miranda Lambert just can’t stay sad or discouraged because she has a bluebird in her heart. That bluebird keeps her going. I also feel, despite being very often depressed, that I have a bluebird in my heart.* This song is tough and tender and unfolds so simply you might not notice how brilliant you’d have to be to write a song like this, and then to sing it.
Look at this perfect chorus:
And if the house just keeps on winning
I got a wildcard up my sleeve
And if love keeps giving me lemons
I'll just mix 'em in my drink
And if the whole wide world stops singing
And all the stars go dark
I'll keep a light on in my soul
Keep a bluebird in my heartI beg you to listen to this song just once. The video sucks though it does feature an actual bluebird.
What’s Your Country Song, Thomas Rhett. The first line of this song is “Did you grow up on a tractor, did your daddy let you drive?” This does not describe my upbringing in any way. I learned to drive in a Toyota Camry with a manual transmission when I was 16 and not a day sooner and my father did teach me but the word daddy has never escaped my lips unless I am talking about Ruthie, who definitely has a daddy. Still, I agree with these commenters on the video’s YouTube page.
Look at Brent Holt! You see how you could be like Brent Holt and open yourself up to the magic of this music? It’s so easy.
*communism
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Thank you for this post and these recommendations. I developed an FM country obsession while working at a try-hard farmstand in the depths of Massachusetts one summer. There's something very perfect-feeling about a well-written country song that I think few other genres (in music or otherwise) can achieve for whatever reason. I don't know if you're interested in the Nashville country songwriting scene/process but I really love this old series of columns by Charlie Hopper: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/authors/charlie-hopper.
I find this post extremely interesting in a “let’s examine this like a bug” kind of way. I did in fact click on the bluebird one since you asked me to “just once”. I made it about 20 seconds before my skin started to crawl. Maybe it’s because l’m what most of these “folks” might call a “yankee” living down here in FM country land. But I don’t think so. I think this music just sucks beyond any words and cannot imagine why anyone who doesn’t choose to have naked women decals on their mud flaps would spend one second of their time listening to this crap with all the amazing music in the world right there on your iPhone. I’m stunned.