thehappycon
I heard a country song the other day:
I met a guy on the red eye
He spotted my guitar
and said what do you do?
I said, I sing for a living,
Country music mixed with
a little rock and a little blues
He said I’m sorry
but I’ve never been crazy
’bout that twang and trains and hillbilly thing
What ever made you want to sing stuff like that?
I just looked at him and laughed and saidcause it’s songs about me
and who I am
songs about loving and living
and good hearted women and family and God
yeah they’re all just
songs about me
songs about me
In my darker days (everyone’s darker days - those between 13 and 19) I listened to a lot of teenage angst music. There were dark tones and heartbreaks and unrequited love and sickness and pain and…..angst. Now I’m not sure what an upper middle class kid with two parents and a nephew and 5^3 caring family members and a steady girlfriend out of his league was doing being depressed. Perhaps it’s a testament to the power of hormones that teenage angst triumphed against very long odds.
I never listened to country music in high school. After all, I was busy preparing myself to be at an elite university. Country music was below me.
But now I’m a junior in college with a beautiful wife, two beautiful nieces and two nephews who will someday appreciate that they do not owe their looks to me. And I listen to country music exclusively.
The question is not who listens to country music. Clearly, conservatives listen to country music. The question is why.
Because country music is happy. I love Rascal Flatts.
There’s that star, the one they said we’d never reach
And just close your eyes
There’s the missing moon, there’s the Milky Way
Heaven’s straight ahead, we’ll be there today
Rainbows right and left, sunshine everywhere
If it couldn’t be baby, how did we get thereThere’s that home, the one they said we’d never share
And just close your eyes
There’s the picket fence, there’s our mailbox,
Puppy on the porch and roses up the walk
Shiny minivan, kids in every seat
Someday we’ll look back and say it wasn’t just a dream
Conservatives don’t listen to country music because it’s all about guns and religion and America; they listen to it because it’s happy. We’re happy people. These are songs about the future, about children and family and Heaven. Songs about people who are invested in someone other than themselves.
There are two kinds of liberal music; there’s Bono, who wants to change the world, and then there’s teen angst, which is about wallowing in self-pity. If you’re Bono, maybe you can the world. If you’re Joe with an Afro-American Studies degree from WashU, you get held up at changing your oil. Or a tire. Or your pants after a long night.
Liberals are miserable because they cannot change the world from the top down. They like music that drowns them in sorrow, just like your average fifteen year old boy. It’s a good business to be in if you like disappointment; after all, you can’t make all the men eunuchs or stop all the cars from burning gas or make everyone a minority.
Margaret Thatcher said the facts of life are conservative. Conservatives work to make life better in a way that is in full compliance with reality: through their children and community.
Liberals like music with lots of drums.
Filed under: Happiness | Tagged: conservative, country music, Happiness, liberal, music
I listed to country music because it’s the only format that isn’t afraid to sing “God” or “Jesus” in the music. Think of “Jesus Take the Wheel.” Wouldn’t have flow in any other format of music. Other country songs mention God in a non-blasphemous way, giving genuine thanks to Him, or aknowledging something He’s done … as you said, it’s HAPPY. Thanks for the post.
Don’t get me wrong. I like country music. Now.
My third daughter re-introduced me to it. It’s changed - a lot.
Not too long ago (by my standards - 20 years ago or so), the statement “Because country music is happy.” would have been delusional. A typical song would have been about some guy planning to kill himself because his girlfriend had cheated on him with his best friend, who had also been fooling around with his wife.
Exaggeration? Not by much.
In that selection of “good old days,” I’ve quipped that the popularity of country songs was expressed in terms of suicide rates.
That was then, this is now. One of my favorites, the title of which I can’t remember, is the account by a young woman whose (idiot) boyfriend cheated on her - and responded not with angsty depression, but by converting his truck to scrap, and carving her name in the seat, to ensure that he realized who was responsible.
The point of this rant: I’ve learned to be careful about characterizing types of music: Rock runs the gamut from the Beach Boys to Alice Cooper; and country isn’t uniform, either.
Your point is well taken.
I had some friends over the other night, and we dug into my iTunes most-played list. It was just chock full of depressing music, all of which were popular songs a few years back, when we were in high school. It occurred to me, then, that all of the songs of the alternative genre were depressing. At least mine all were; generally about unrequited love or about someone’s best friend dying from i)drugs, ii) suicide, or iii) a car wreck. Nasty, nasty music geared toward teenagers with hormone induced mood swings.
I’m pretty sure all those songs sound the same.
However, country songs are definitely NOT all the same, and I cherry picked some jolly ones to make my point. The difference is that there are no happy alternative songs that aren’t about i)drugs, ii)booze, or iii) sex. There are happy country songs about other things.
It’s not that moving from liberal to conservative views changes your favored genre, but that moving from liberal to conservative increases your chances of moving to happy music. For me, that move was to country, although I like Kansas as well, a rock band that sings about happy things.
I don’t think my argument was clearly constructed.