Holiday Music

Holiday Itinerary for NGS and BB:
Dec. 22 - Drive to Quad Cities, Iowa
Dec. 26 - Drive to Grand Rapids, Michigan
Dec. 29 - Drive to Columbus, Ohio
Dec. 31 - Drive to Quad Cities, Iowa
Jan. 1 - Drive to Minneapolis, Minnesota

I do not recommend this itinerary to anyone riding in a car with a person who does not like to listen to TALK while driving. This means no NPR, no books on tape, no news updates...who travels like this? (I love my husband, but if there was any possible way to rewire his brain so nothing else changed but this...I'm pretty sure I would!)

Anyway, as I boycott anything with an i in front of it (ipod, itunes, ihateyouapple), this means we were effectively stuck listening to the radio. When driving through the midwest, your options for radio stations include god rock, classic rock, talk, top 40 (but seriously, I don't know those songs), and country. Once in a great while you will find an "oldies" station and those will be clung to, but generally speaking, we listen to country. I have a love/hate with country music radio. I love that it exists. I hate that it picks twenty songs and puts them in constant rotation.

Here are the dozen songs we heard over and over and over and over and over (and over!) again on our trip. They will forever be ingrained in my head as Christmas 2008.

1) "She Wouldn't Be Gone" - Blake Shelton
Basically this guy is a dick to his girlfriend (wife?) and then goes crazy when she leaves. I say he deserves everything he gets and there's nothing in the song that makes me feel sympathy for the narrator. So...after the first couple of times of trying to warm up to this song, I'd usually flick it off.

2) "Just a Dream" - Carrie Underwood
First of all, I find the switching of narrators too confusing in this song. It's in third person except for the chorus, which is in first person. Am I the only one who finds this distracting? Switching pronouns is too much for some of us to handle people!! The melodrama of this song is okay for me, but proved too much for the boy after about the fifth time. Oh, and if they were "merely" engaged, she wouldn't get the flag at the funeral, his next of kin (probably a parent) would.

*We also heard "Jesus Take the Wheel" a few times on this trip. The first time BB heard the chorus he started laughing. "That sounds like a brilliant plan."

3) "In Color" - Jamey Johnson
I appreciate a good story song. I like this one. I wish I hadn't heard it two dozen times in a row, but I like this song. It tells a simple tale in a simple way.

4) "I'll Walk" - Bucky Covington
Bucky and I go way back. My antipathy has been well documented. This song does not help matters. Melodrama from Carrie Underwood I'll take. She's a 25 year old female. Melodrama from Bucky Covington is unacceptable. He's in his 30s and should damn well know better. This songs sucks worse than the Philadelphia Eagles.

5) "Already Gone" - Sugarland
I love Jennifer Nettles' (Nettles's? screw possessives) voice. It's spectacular. I would have listened to this song every single time it came on the radio and turned it up if the boy had not been with me. He is not so much a lover. Sooo...split decision on this one folks.

6) "Anything Goes" - Randy Houser
Randy who? That's what you're thinking. That's right? Apparently he's a songwriter who's tyring to make it big with a generic, run of the mill sounding, awkwardly lyricized song. Good luck Randy!

7) "Chicken Fried" - Zac Brown Band
I heard an interview with the lead singer of this group and they said that they sat down and wrote a song that included everything that made them happy. Seriously. They wrote a song filled with cliches. And that means, of course, it makes me happy. Even the boy would occasionally bob his head. It's cheesy and they throw this patriotic part in the middle that doesn't really make sense (be patriotic by all means, but don't make it an afterthought!), but overall it's a classic, trite country song. But I don't have a lot of faith that we'll ever hear another Zac Brown Band song on the charts again.

8) "Country Boy" - Alan Jackson
I think AJ is a classy, stand-up guy. But his song quality has been getting weaker and weaker with every passing release. Retire with dignity, man. This song is awful. Whoever is calling and requesting this song, please stop!

9) "Cowgirls Don't Cry" - Brooks and Dunn (featuring Reba McEntire)
Huh. I hate to pick on the legends. This song was written by Reba, apparently. She sings the final chorus (which is supposed to be what a man was saying when he died so it's an odd choice to have a female vocalizing it). It's kind of a boring, super repetitive song. I think the chorus is sung like 80 gazillion times. Please stop the pain. "If You See Him/If You See Her" is a much better Brooks and Dunn/Reba collaboration. Please play that in place of this awful song.

10) "God Love Her" - Toby Keith
I am a little ashamed to say this, but I love Toby Keith's music. Look, I don't agree with his politics and I know he's a bit of a jerkhead, but boy's got some chops. He is, rather single-handedly, keeping honky tonk music alive and on the charts. Say what you will about his extracurriculars, he knows music. This song...I couldn't help but sing along. Neither could the boy. We're not proud of it, but if you saw a gold pickup truck driving down I-35, I-94, I-74, or I-75 with two people screaming out the lyrics to some song riding in it, that was probably us singing this song.

11) "Roll with Me" - Montgomery Gentry
The first line of this song always sucks me in and makes me think they're going to play Gary Allan's "Bourbon Borderline" (my love for this song is recorded in this entry), but then they go and mess it all up by playing this boring song. I can't even remember what my major criticisms of the song were - probably just that it made me yawn and want to nap each time it came over the airwaves.

12) Tim McGraw/Kenny Chesney/Taylor Swift anything
With the exception of "She Can't Be Really Gone" by Tim McGraw and anything my girl Taylor sings, these songs were immediately turned off. When McGraw and Chesney first began their overtaking of country music, I broke up with the radio for a bit. I have not warmed up to them. Can someone send a memo about the overplaying of these sappy, barely capable of a single octave, one note artists?