[Note: Every Friday on First Thoughts we host a discussion about some aspect of popular culture. Have a suggestion for a topic? Send them to me at jcarter@firstthings.com]
Since I was a boy I’ve been captivated by country music. But recently I’ve been dismayed by a disturbing trend in the genre’s music videos: holding people captive. Literally.
Intimations of violence have long been a lyrical feature of darker country songs. But recently, upbeat mid-tempo radio fare is frequently accompanied by visual imagery of the scorned lover kidnapping their ex (usually a man), tying them up, and either committing further violence or abandoning them (sometimes to die).
Consider the following examples:
Sugarland, “Stuck LIke Glue” (Currently ranked #3 on the Billboard Country Chart)
This video doesn’t try to hide the fact that Jennifer Nettles is a psychopathic stalker. But why is her weird bandmate helping to kidnap her ex-boyfriend?
Reba McEntire, “Turn On The Radio” (Currently #13)
Et tu, Reba? McEntire has always been one of the classier women in country music. So why does she need to tie up a guy and keep him locked in a warehouse on the wrong side of the tracks?
Jaron And The Long Road To Love, “Pray For You” (Peaked at #13)
In this video for one of the most loathsome songs to come along in a decade, the singer prays that his ex will suffer all sorts of harm. But in keeping with country’s squeamishness about glamorizing violence against woman, the male singer is the one who gets gagged, strapped with belts, and thrown into a tub full of water while the woman threatens to electrocute him.
Bomshel, “Just Fine” (Peaked at #53)
This poor two-timing sap gets drugged, robbed, tattooed, and dragged around town like he was in a remake of Weekend at Bernie’s before being abandoned in the boxcar of a train.
Toby Keith, “Too Little Too Late” (2006)
This video of Keith keeping his paramour tied up in the basement while he builds a brick wall to seal her in seems to violate the unwritten code that woman can’t get hurt in a country video unless she is able to exact revenge. But in the last few seconds, the twist restores the trope.
Johnny Cash, “Delia’s Gone” (2000)
Cash seems to have kicked off the trend a decade ago when he tied model Kate Moss to a chair (before gunning her down with a submachine gun). At least here, though, it fits the context and the lyrics. How did bondage and kidnapping go from this murder ballad to becoming a fad in lighthearted pop country videos?
Any examples I missed? Let me know in the comments section.
October 22nd, 2010 | 4:26 am
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October 22nd, 2010 | 4:56 am
[...] Country Music CaptivesFirst Things (blog)Send them to me at jcarter@firstthings.com] Since I was a boy I've been captivated by country music. But recently I've been dismayed by a disturbing trend … [...]
October 22nd, 2010 | 9:27 am
For most of its history, country music’s protagonists were portrayed as victims of forces beyond their control. Hank Williams sang: “I’m a rolling stone, all alone and lost…” and “I can’t help it if I’m still in love with you.” Webb Pierce sang: “There stands the glass that will ease all my pain…” Tammy Wynette sang: “Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E…” These were songs for Roosevelt Democrats.
Judging by your evidence (I no longer listen) today’s protagonists seem more pro-active. Maybe this is music for Tea Partiers.
October 22nd, 2010 | 11:13 am
You had me up to “Reba McEntire has always been one of the classier women in country music.”
One of her most famous songs is about a woman who was encouraged by her mother to become a prostitute, and appears to think it was a decent career path. Granting how creepy the examples you’re giving today are, I think there are plenty of female country singers with far more class than that.
And I do agree with you about the topic.
October 22nd, 2010 | 11:19 am
FWIW, Nan Kelley, host of Great American Country’s Top 20 Countdown (www.gactv.com/gac/shows_top) commented on this last week – didn’t explain why, just asked the same question. I don’t know either, but I wouldn’t read that much into it, other than it’s a trend & people follow them without thinking and they run out of ideas for videos.
As to “Pray for You” – where’s your sense of humor? Not the video, so much as the song, which strikes me as a funny expression of the lizard brain which we all have, whether we admit it or not.
October 22nd, 2010 | 1:46 pm
pentamom One of her most famous songs is about a woman who was encouraged by her mother to become a prostitute, and appears to think it was a decent career path.
I hate that song and am loathe to defend it. But I don’t think it claims that prostitution is a “decent career path.” At most it has a “you might have done the same in my shoes” apology for the character’s actions. That doesn’t excuse it, of course, but at least it isn’t trying to glamorize prostitution.
Judith FWIW, Nan Kelley, host of Great American Country’s Top 20 Countdown (www.gactv.com/gac/shows_top) commented on this last week
Dang, I thought I might have been the first to notice this pattern. But it shouldn’t surprise me that Kelly noticed it too since I discovered it after watching too many videos on GAC.
October 22nd, 2010 | 2:29 pm
Lest you forget, I present “Goodbye Earl” by The Dixie Chicks. Kill your best friend’s abusive jerk of a husband, drag his corpse around awhile, cartoonish hilarity ensues. Or something.
“Ain’t it dark, wrapped up in that tarp Earl?”
I find spousal abuse abhorrant. But c’mon.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-14247076/dixie_chicks_goodbye_earl_official_music_video/
October 22nd, 2010 | 4:43 pm
Joe, without getting into the silliness of an exegetical battle over country song lyrics, I can concede your point and still contend that anyone who makes a name for herself off a song like that might not be all bad, but has a thin claim to being among the classiest of her type. I can think of at least as many female country singers who present themselves far better than that, as those who come off trashier — probably more.
October 22nd, 2010 | 4:46 pm
But yeah, there’s definitely an ugly trend — not just the bondage thing, but songs like “Gunpowder and Lead” and even the otherwise-mostly-sweet Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” that glorify hateful, violent, even lethal behavior as humorous retribution for infidelity. There’s always been a stream of this, but in my experience it was more light-hearted and less fully serious in its projection of hatred, and a smaller proportion of what was out there.
October 22nd, 2010 | 9:31 pm
Aquinas said lust always leads to violence.
October 23rd, 2010 | 5:39 pm
“Aquinas said lust always leads to violence.”
He is at least partly right. I am a library clerk and I occasionally have to pass “questionable literature” through. The cover illustrations tend to convey the image not of honorable affection but of “Please abuse me O bloody-handed cattle thief”.
October 24th, 2010 | 3:36 am
Real country music — the kind they don’t make any more — was the genuine product of the American folk. It was the sound of broke, powerless Southern po’ whites, ex-sharecroppers and ex-farmers lost in a rapidly urbanizing and mechanizing world that was slowly becoming less and less comprehensible. The names are familiar: Hank Williams is the best-known, the archetypical lost soul who lived and died putting the “honky” in honky-tonk.
Since 1968 or so, however, what has come to be known as “country music” no longer stems from the broken hearts and worn-out souls of America’s forgotten white underclass. Since then, the flavor and texture of country music have been Africanized with a rock beat and homogenized by Nashville music executives into “the country sound” — in other words, hayseed-flavored, factory-extruded four-chord pop music entertainment product written by and for middle-class suburban white girls and the backwards-ballcap-wearing male NASCAR fans that love them. It’s just moon-spoon-june Top-40 crapola with a veneer of fake country layered on top — barely “music”, and not “country’ at all.
Murder ballads have been common in folk music since time immemorial, and country music certainly has had its share over the years. But in the past, murder by passion was always dealt with in a matter-of-fact matter by country artists — a fact of life, yes, but nothing to be celebrated. The fact that pop schlock “country music” has degenerated to the point of becoming thinly-veiled S&M stroke fantasy is hardly surprising; in this post-Christian era, the tattooed yokels are rapidly returning to their bloodthirsty pagan roots.
Real country music still exits, of course, but like the blues or rock and roll, you ain’t going to find it on no music video satellite channel. It’s on stage right now in some beer joint you’ve never heard of, out on the old highway on the poor side of town.
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