| | Jason, even if I didn't completely agree with your original post, we need people who write with that much eloquence and clarity in the Objectivist movement!
I want to add some further points in explanation and defense of country music:
Country and Western is a very wide all-American category. It melds with a lot of pop, a lot of classic American music from Swanee River to the present day. I bet many of us may not have thought of "El Paso" or music about gunfighters and cowboys from old Disney epics as country music? The Ballad of Davy Crockett. The Daniel Boone theme song from the old t.v. series.
I suspect some sophisticated people who don't like C&W may be buying the redneck or lowbrow or crying-in-the-beer stereotype and making a category mistake. Only thinking of Country rather than Country and Western, for example. Or you may have only been exposed to just one type of C&W (e.g., the whiny, waily, mopey stuff is "rural country" often but not always played on radio stations outside of the cities, as opposed to "urban country", often more upbeat in many parts of the country.)
Or "top forty" country, which plays the most recent release by Garth, etc. over and over regardless of quality. But then you wouldn't have ever heard the best CD collections of the last five or more decades - from Patsy Cline, Marty Robbins, Conway Twitty to Ronnie Milsap, the Oak Ridge Boys, Willie Nelson and many others. Has anyone not exposed to a lot of C&W even -heard- of Don Williams?
A lot of the power of the better examples comes from, paradoxically, its literateness, its facility with language. The lyrics can be well-written and pack a punch. The best of them can be funny, apt, clever, satirical, poignant.
And the second thing, its ability to capture emotions and to recreate them with economy and force - an area where Objectivists are often lacking and need this kind of emotional fuel. One strand of C&W captures what it is to be in love, the unique force of that emotion and all its ramifications. It can be sentimental. It can be patriotic. It can be angry (many of the post 9/11 country songs about saddling up and taking down the bastards).
The wide range of human moods and experiences: I'm looking at a random collection I have of different singers and groups, called "hot number one country hits" which I got in a bargain bin. The titles give an indication of this spectrum, none of them whiny or about defeatism, dead houndogs, or jailtime: "Brand New Man", "I'd Love You All Over Again", "Don't Tell Me What To Do", "She's In Love With The Boy".
You don't have to rely on luck of the draw radio playings for your assessment of up to the second Country and Western music. You can get classics from the record store and get a better sampling.
Jennifer and George, I hope this helps you find your missing teeth and be able to enjoy a wider range of musical nourishment. Some lyrics would help concretize all this or cement it in further but this will have to only serve as a temporary bridge for now.
Take one "Crazy in Love" Conway Twitty soft wisftfull nostalgia purple pill and one "Ballad of New Orleans [Johnny Horton] gut-thumping, warlusting, patriotic pink pill and see me in the morning.
Phil
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