Heartaches by the Numbers by Bill Friskics-Warren and David Cantwell

How did Heartaches by the Numbers: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles by Bill Friskics-Warren and David Cantwell come on my radar? I honestly thought it was that I heard about it on a podcast, but I can't figure out which podcast, so...it will forever be a mystery, I guess. But I had to work pretty hard to find it, including a World Cat search at the university library that a reference librarian had to walk me through. GO LIBRIARIANS!! 

Also, before we go any further, yes, yes, I did make a playlist of the 500* songs and the 100 bonus songs at the end. You're welcome. It's over 24 hours long. Enjoy.

So, of course I was going to quibble with the 500 songs chosen (Faith Hill gets a song, but there's not a single Alabama song? puh-leeze), but I have bigger gripes with this book. I'm going to lay out my three largest gripes here and you can tell me all about what a persnickety pendant I am. 

1) First, I'd like to say that I try not to gatekeep what is and what is not country music. I don't love the current influx of rap/hip-hop contributions to contemporary country music, but that doesn't stop it from being country music. But Cantwell and Friskies-Warren do not even attempt to define what country music is, so it's hard to know what songs were and were not considered for this list. 

We're not interested in defining country music so much as in engaging the tradition, in tracing country's shifting fence lines to understand where the music, in all its manifestations, has been and where it's going. That isn't to say that the music doesn't have certain defining features, such as its rural, southern, working-class roots, or a penchant for certain stringed instruments or harmony patterns. Or that we thinking everything is or can be construed as country. More than anything else, it's the tradition of the people making records perceive themselves working out of, or the roots or influences they acknowledge, or just the affinities they display that make their records country. (page xi)

While I wholeheartedly appreciate the urge the authors have to be inclusive, I also am a bit annoyed that they never actually list out themes or instruments that are necessary/desirable to be classified as country. I ended up creating my own sort of definition, but it's very squirrely and I struggle with the line between country and the following genres: rock, folk, gospel, jazz, western swing, and probably several others. 

2) Okay, so if these guys aren't going to define country, maybe they'll talk about why they included each of these songs in the list? Maybe talk about how the song connects to these themes/instrumentations or maybe write about how it talks to other songs in the country tradition? Now, to be fair, some of the entries do that. But here's the entire entry for Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry" (which went to #1 on the pop charts for three weeks in 1960):

"Little Miss Dynamite" begs, Owen Bradley's strings leak tears down around her, and though decades come and go, nothing changes. Brenda Lee says she's sorry over and over and over - despite the fact that the lover she's hurt has already forgiven her. "You say mistakes are part of being young/but that don't right the wrong that's been done," she responds before apologizing yet again. It makes you wonder - just how many years will have to pass before she forgives herself? - dc (page 108-109)

But why is it on this list? There are strings, but there are strings in Beethoven's string quartets and no one is calling them country music. This was a pop hit! I just don't understand. At this rate, we can call Britney's "Lucky" a country song. I just need a little bit of guidance about why each of these songs is a great single in country music. 

3) The other thing is that the organization of this book is a mess. It's not in chronological, thematic, or alphabetical order. Is it the order of importance? If so, please excuse me while I suggest that "Help Me Make It Through the Night" by Sammi Smith (the first song in the book) is NOT the most influential country song in the pantheon. It's a good song, but is it great? What's with this order? 

(Their reasoning probably has something to do with this line: A crossover smash, "Help Me Make It Through the Night" signaled country's belated arrival in the rock and soul era. - page 1)

So, I liked reading this book and I learned a lot and now I have a playlist that I'll listen to forever and ever (amen), but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. (No Alabama, Brooks and Dunn, or Toby Keith is suspicious, too.)

3/5 stars

*There were a handful of songs where I couldn't find the song by the same artist and I subbed in the song for a different artist. There were two or three songs I couldn't find on Spotify at all.  There are many songs that I couldn't find the exact single (the year, producer), but I did the best I could. The Garth Brooks songs are all live versions because he doesn't allow Spotify to use his work. It's complicated, but it's as close as I could get. 

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Lines of note:

Notes on women in country music:

"Stand by Your Man" could well be the most controversial record in the history of country music. It certainly caused a stir when it came out during the late sixties, a time when the women's movement was gaining strength and both the Roe v. Wade decision and the battle over the Equal Rights Amendment loomed on the horizon. Feminists decried the record as a prescription for female slavery while the religious right hailed it as a recipe for becoming the "total woman" - that is, a woman totally subordinate to her husband. (page 8)

Wait...I'm over here realizing for the first time that a lot of people don't think this song is mostly just about how hard marriage is. It's not about being a doormat or a total woman - it's about the challenges of a long-term relationship. What weirdos on either side making the song more extreme than it is. 

Re: "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" by Kitty Wells

Wells gave little thought to these sorts of musicological and sociological considerations when "Honky Tonk Angels" was making its way up the charts. From her perspective, the single's success just meant she was going to work outside the home, and therein lies yet another reason "Angels" was such a pivotal record. More than just tapping the malaise felt by many of the era's women, Wells's breakthrough hit helped open the doors of Nashville's recording studios to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of female singers. (Despite the fact that Patsy Montana's "I Wanna Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" was rumored to have moved a million units back in 1935, postwar country execs didn't think women could sell records - that is, until "Honky Tonk Angels" reportedly sold 800,000 copies.) (page 10)

I almost died at the the authors' own sexism here by putting that parenthetical there. So much sexism inherent in this book, published in 2003. 

All of which is to say that "Independence Day" [by Martina McBride] rocks harder than "Goodbye Earl" [by The Chicks] in every possible way. And, for once, diva-wannabe Martina McBride finds a subject that's the perfect emotional match for her vocal fireworks. (page 41)

Speaking of sexism, let's all take a beat and realize that while "Independence Day" and "Goodbye Earl" deal with similar themes, they do not need to be in competition with one another. They're both great songs. What kind of setting up a catfight is this BS?

Re: "One's on the Way" by Loretta Lynn

Bruce Springsteen might have had "One's on the Way" in mind when he sang, "we learned more from a three-minute record, baby, then we ever learned in school." Lynn's single clocks in a two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, but it's hard to imagine a roomful of sociologists saying as much about class and gender as she does here. (page 66)

Loretta's got "One's on the Way," "The Pill," "Rated X," and "Fist City." She courted controversy long before The Chicks came along and there's something deeply admirable about it. 

Notes on the pervasive racism in country music:

African American country singer Cleve Francis, alluding to the racism that's pervaded the industry since its inception, observed, "You can't shake the tree and in seventy-five years have only one black man fall out who can sing country music."

Francis, of course, was referring to Country Music Hall of Famer Charley Pride, one of Nashville's best-selling artists during the sixties and seventies. Oklahoma-born Stoney Edwards is a distant second to Pride among black country singers, charting a mere fifteen singles from 1971 to 1980, only two of which reached the Top Twenty. (page 29)

I call myself a country fan and I'd never heard of Stoney Edwards before. That's dispiriting. Darius Rucker has broken Edwards's record with six solo number ones. 

You might not know it from reading most histories of the music, but DeFord Bailey, and not Charley Pride, was the first black star in country music. "The Harmonica Wizard" had been a hit on the Grand Ole Opry a good ten years before Pride was born...Bailey's fifteen-year tenure on the Opry, however, was a conflicted on. He was among the show's best-loved performers; one year he appeared on forty-nine broadcasts, at least twice as many as any of the Opry's other regulars. Yet the Opry brass also dubbed him the show's "mascot," an epithet that implied he was less than a full member of the cast, if not somehow less than human. Then there were the circumstances surrounding his firing form the show in 1941, an incident that might very well have been racially motivated. Bitter and disillusioned, Bailey went back to shining shoes for a living and rarely performed in public again. (page 63)

Ditto not having heard of DeFord Bailey before. I should brush up on my Opry history, obviously. 

Things I learned/looked up:

Hank Williams's "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" was in the Top Ten the very week he died and then it climbed to #1. Is this awesome or tragic? (page 19)

Jim Reeves was internationally popular and had a crazy backlog of songs. Thirty-five of his singles charted after he died in a plane crash in 1964! 

The first Christmas record believed to have been recorded was a barbershop version of "Silent Night" by the Hayden Quartet in 1902. (page 126)

Crystal Gayle and Loretta Lynn were sisters!!! (page 210)

Hat mentions:

Four cowboy hats, a hat-act, a Stetson hat, Gene Autry's white hat. I would have predicted the hat total to be more than seven when I started reading this book. 

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This book was published in 2003, so it's interesting to think about what songs from the 20 years would have been added to this book. Surely "Old Town Road"? "Wagon Wheel" or "Come Back Song" by Darius Rucker? "Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley"? "Life Ain't Always Beautiful" by Gary Allan? "Stay" by Sugarland?  "Follow Your Arrow" by Kacey Musgraves? "Drunk on a Plane" by Dierks Bentley? (Okay, fine, I just want a Dierks song on there.)

I don't know. What a country song from the last two decades you think will last the test of time?