Give country music a chance, you might like it

Turn on the television in my bedroom, and it will more than likely be set to channel 64,… Turn on the television in my bedroom, and it will more than likely be set to channel 64, Country Music Television. Yeah, that’s right, I watch CMT, and I love country music. Where else should I turn for quality music? MTV and VH1 are all about reality programs, but I can only find comfort in sweet music from CMT.

Now, if you would talk to anyone who knew me five or six years ago, they would tell you that I hated country music. Because I did. Somehow, someway, I got turned onto country music one afternoon sophomore year when I turned on CMT because nothing else was on.

The videos were fun to watch, and the songs were creative and structured to stick in your memory. In videos for male singers and bands, there are beautiful women; female artists and bands are beautiful and wear cowboy hats. (By the way, ladies, guys love chicks who wear cowboy hats.)

But what’s not to love about country music? I have one beef with it, but I tend to look past that whenever I can. My complaint: Not all country musicians write their own songs. But you know what? Neither do a lot of pop artists.

The country singers I love the most do write their own songs. Artists like Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney and Big and Rich. There are songwriters in country music, but just because some artists sing other people’s songs doesn’t make the music bad. Actually, it gives people who can write really good songs a chance to get their music out there. What I wouldn’t give to hear John Michael Montgomery or Joe Nichols sing a song that I wrote.

But the music that country musicians play is music worth listening to because they aren’t singing about sex and violence. They aren’t singing about hating their parents or killing themselves. They sing about hardships in life but with a touch of hope that makes every song beautiful. Sure, there are some songs about “losing my truck, my girlfriend and my dog all in the same day and crying about it into my beer,” but if you listen to these songs, they are pretty damn good.

Great country artists blazed the trail for the artists of today. Great musicians like Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn (who, by the way, is still at the top of the charts), Merle Haggard, David Allan Coe, and Hank Williams Jr. paved the way. If it wasn’t for these greats and others like them, country would still only be heard in Tennessee. But now when you turn on the radio, there are two prominent country radio stations in the city of Pittsburgh.

The music is clean enough for your grandmother and rocking enough for your teen-age brother or sister. Take Big and Rich for example. Their debut album, A Horse of a Different Color, mixes rock-sounding guitars with country twang and even a rapping cowboy on their first track.

They didn’t release the album until they let one of their grandmothers listen to it. Anything she turned her nose to, they changed. The song “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” would have been a bit raunchier had it not been for granny. They have their listeners in mind when they make an album — if their grandmother wouldn’t have liked it, then my grandmother might not have liked it.

If you want to get into country music but don’t know where to start, let me suggest that you pick up one of Hank Williams Jr.’s greatest-hits albums, but make sure it has “Family Tradition” and “Tear in My Beer” on it. Then grab David Allan Coe’s Live at Billy Bob’s. It’s a clean Coe; he doesn’t have any of his nastier songs on it (and if you know Coe, you know what I mean), but there are great songs on this one like “’59 Cadillac, ’57 Chevrolet,” “Take This Job and Shove It,” “Drank My Wife Away” and “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.”

Pick up anything by Kenny Chesney, Montgomery Gentry’s My Town, Terri Clark’s greatest-hits album, Joe Nichols’ Man With a Memory and anything from Garth Brooks, and you should have a pretty solid foundation. After that, pick up Toby Keith’s Shock’n Ya’ll. And if you really start getting into country music, pick up The Povertyneck Hillbillies; they’re a local country band, and they’re really good.

Even though I love me some country music, I know not everyone does, and I’m OK with that. Just don’t say it sucks unless you give it a try. I gave new gangsta rap a try, and I’d rather not listen to it.

Brian Palmer is the A’E editor and will be more than happy to let you listen to some of David Allan Coe’s nastier songs if you never have. E-mail him at bkp8@pitt.edu.