I always hated county music.
Until I got to college. That was when I had my first experience with a southern guy (no, not like that) who wasn’t a traditional cowboy (actually Italian) – but loved country. I liked him at first because he was hot, but then I liked him because he was funny and a joy to be around. We became friends. So, when I found myself repeatedly riding around with him and his George Strait loving homeboys making levity filled memories in New Orleans, I guess I slowly (secretly) warmed up to the likes of “Cowboys Like Us”. What was this smiley, happy, twangy sound that reminded me of sunshine and daisy dukes and everything opposite of the Deftones I’d go home and smash the contents of my room to? This was the kind of music that reminded you of how simple life can and should be.
I ended up transferring out of that college.
And my buddy and I kept in touch, but the country music and I … not so much. Maybe its perceived quality required the presence of happy shiny folk like my southern pal and his pals I’d heard it with before. Or maybe it was that most of the chart toppers all kinda sound the same. As I learned today:
Can I be honest, though?
I love a good mashup. Always have – especially back in college (right around the time I was first being intro’d to this southern stuff) when my go-to music was the cardio-and-dance-motivating electronic, techno-y, drop-the-bass style songs. At least half of my playlists would be mashups. Seeing as this same method translates beautifully to the totally different style of twangy tunes, I tend to think it’s something to do with how the brain adores patterns: Be they in literary form with similes and metaphors, visually when we see a picture of a dog yawning next to a picture of a dog yawning, taste-wise when we pour chocolate syrup on an already decadent confection, or melodically like this.
So when I heard this mixture of six different country songs (none of which I’d heard before), I first thought to myself, “Is that Weezy singing country?” (I refuse to Google to see if I got that spelling or reference right). But then I second-thought to myself, “This is the best song ever!” I looked up a few of the individual songs on Youtube to see if they sounded as awesome solo – but I was sorely disappointed. Was it that they were tune-tweaked slightly? Was it just my brain anticipating that the D.J.’d drop the banjo bass and give me a real auditory spectacle? Or do the O.G. songs really sound so alike that we need something next-level like this to make country stand out anymore?
To be fair, I’m pretty sure that if you did this with any other genre (pop, for instance), taking Perry, Gaga, and whoever else I’d hear if I dusted off my radio and unstuck the power button – you’d get the same result, pretty much. I might be wrong, though. While I’m still not country’s biggest cheerleader, at least its singers seem capable of carrying a tune and making a melody (albeit inadvertently quasi-plagiarized ones, apparently). Not sure if an eff-ton of autotune would sound so stellar in synchronicity… or more like a hoard of robots mourning the death of innovative music at the Wailing Wall.
Either way, it was nice to fall in love with country for a moment again.
Even if country’s about “simpler things” – while this is the product of heavy engineering.
Afterthoughts: I think half’a me liking the mashup is because they did definitely change the pitch and frequency to something far more pleasing than the originals – which are the ear equivalent of one of those girls who’d be a perfect ten if they just lost ten pounds and got a nose job. You wanna like it so bad because it’s so close to being brilliant; but now that you know how good it could sound, you just don’t wanna deal with the comparatively hideous as-is version at all. Oh, and the other half’a me liking it? Probably ‘cause the end result sounds like a schizophrenic dude serenading sweet nothings to me.
(And we all know crazy’s kinda what I do.)