Pantheon Songs

Country music is a polarizing genre. On the one hand it represents a sizable portion of the musical and cultural DNA of American society, and on the other hand its significance within the musical and cultural fabric of American society is looked at by some with scorn and bile. Country music is 50% responsible for rock n’ roll^[1] (which is a good thing) but it is also seemingly associated with 98% of All That Is Wrong With America, from the perspective of those who listen to NPR and watch The Daily Show (which is a bad thing). To the elitist^[2] and the boorish, country music can be assimilated to wretched SUVs, gun racks, inbreeding, NASCAR, and birthers. (And dueling banjos foreshadowing forced sodomy in wooded areas.) And while country music as a mainstream genre has made huge inroads into Top 40 radio and Madison Avenue marketing over the last twenty years, it is still very much seen by many as the racist unemployed cousin who you dread seeing the one time a year at Thanksgiving or Christmas. As an institution and foundation of American music as a whole, country music is very much a part of our social DNA but to talk about country music is to talk about the South, where it took root, shape, and form. And to talk about the South is to have the (depending on your perspective) incorporeal specters—or corporeal monsters—of slavery and segregation along the periphery, which is probably why those who identify themselves as being Left have such an easy time discounting country music to begin with: the historical inclusion of slavery and segregation allows them to build an impenetrable demarcation point separating the good (Left) from the ugly (Right). In some cases, the musicians themselves who wholeheartedly embrace the Right can be used as the demarcation point—see: Keith, Toby.

In the mid and late ’60′s country music started to become absorbed by the Counterculture/Left and gradually became co-opted by the West (the polar opposite of the South). In their attempt to deconstruct and revisit and reassemble and take inventory of everything in the mainstream before them, the Left, after having destroyed the nuclear family and the virtue of social obedience by way of irony, performed a successful face-lift on the Right’s last sacred cow, country music, by way of (mostly) simple curiosity. If Bob Dylan can perform folk songs with an electric guitar, and The Beach Boys can record an album that uses dog’s barking and bicycle bells, and The Beatles can integrate Middle Eastern instruments into their music, and The Rolling Stones—a group of white English kids—can be seen as legitimate blues artists, and a collection of bands could give serious weight to the psychedelic genre, then isn’t country music basically the last frontier to conquer?—this is the question that I can envisage crossing the minds of many artists and bands in the late ’60′s.

You could argue about which album ushered in the modern country movement in the rock era but to me it begins with Sweetheart of the Rodeo by The Byrds. The album was initially conceived as being a commentary on 20th century music as a whole but the newest member of the band, Gram Parsons, had a better idea: have the album fully embrace a country music aesthetic. The result is an album that includes covers of songs by Cindy Walker and Merle Haggard, a cover of the traditional folk song “I Am A Pilgrim,” and a country-fied version of William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water.” If you love present-day country music, this album is a terrific throwback; if country’s not your thing but you have a healthy appetite for music, this is one of those albums that you need to hear before you die. It’s a great American album that few Americans, Right- or Left-leaning, have heard.

Within a year Parsons (and founding member Chris Hillman) left The Byrds, formed The Flying Burrito Brothers and released their debut album The Gilded Palace of Sin. Like Sweetheart of the Rodeo, the debut album by The Flying Burrito Brothers is a critic’s darling and a huge influence on modern country music. And the first track on Gilded Palace, “Christine’s Tune,” is one of the best country songs of the rock era.^[3]

“Christine’s Tune” starts with a gorgeous opening by way of an acoustic guitar effortlessly galloping along until met with an electric twangy guitar, followed by a fuzzy, lo-fi guitar in the distance that signifies the end of the choruses. Lyrically, this song is an evisceration of whoever Christine is; a deliberate and epic takedown of a woman who is repeatedly described as “a devil in disguise.”^[4] One of the best group of lyrics, though, is:

“Unhappiness has been her close companion
Her world is full of jealously and doubt
It gets her off to see a person crying
She’s just the kind that you can do without”

And in a stroke of genius, the last lyric is a terrific jab at the guy in the song. The song is basically saying Well, yeah, this woman’s a bitch and heartless and yet… you still have to sleep with her. To me, it’s a great and subtle commentary on the shallowness that can consume males when it comes to sex. It’s sarcastic and it also expands upon the idea of sex as a weapon.

If this song were originally produced by some folks in the heart of Tennessee or the South, there’s a good chance that the last lyrics dealing with the guy’s perspective would be more macho or more humorous. Instead, Parsons and Hillman built in a subtlety into the song: a subtlety that’s invisible if you don’t want to look for it or hear it (because, let’s face it, this is nothing if not a terrific fuck you/breakup song) but if you do notice it it’s a great nuance, which transforms the song from merely being an angry song about a girl to being one that chips at the gilded ego of males.

The Flying Burrito Brothers created a song using an aesthetic that was firmly Right and made it into something that the Left could appreciate without irony factoring into it. The West took a page from the South and made it their own—what a brilliant totem for not only the soul of the counterculture movement but of the metamorphosis of one of America’s most defining musical genre.

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[1] Blues music is responsible for the other 50%.

[2] Please don’t interpret my use of the word elitist here as being a license to assume that I am using it in the same context that The Right uses it, which is to say that they use elitist as an umbrella term for “everything that a liberal or Democrat enjoys” (i.e.–The New York Times, a college education, Whole Foods, etc.). I use the word here to apply to people who reply with “I like all kinds of music… except country music” when asked what music they listen to. You know who you are.

[3] “Dead Flowers” by The Stones is still the best and most definitive country song of the rock era to me but “Christine’s Tune” isn’t far behind.

[4] In fact, if you were to listen to this song for the first time and not know what the title was beforehand you would probably assume that it was called “Devil in Disguise.”