The things that come to those that wait may be the things left by those that got there first.— Steven Tyler
Rock and Country music have been getting closer to the same sound for over 30 years
Steven Tyler is an iconic image in the music world. Sometimes referred to as “everyone’s favorite grandmother” because of the striped hair and plethora of flowing scarves, the former Aerosmith frontman presents a character unlike any other in any music genre. I mean, come on, who else would be wandering around New York City in the middle of a blizzard with his daughter, and then take over a CNN live report? The dude may look like a lady from time to time, but he is so totally unique both in sight and in sound as to be instantly recognizable even if he were to try his hand at opera.
While the Met stage may not be currently within his sites, though, Steven Tyler has set his eyes firmly upon the country music market. He announced last year that his next album would be country, but his first single from that album, Love Is Your Name, failed to generate a tremendous amount of excitement. Perhaps the sound was too smooth. Perhaps country fans just weren’t interested. Whatever the reason, response was more of a bored yawn than what typically accompanies the rocker’s new releases.
If at first you don’t succeed, drop a second single, which is exactly what Tyler did this past week. The new single, Red, White & You, certainly sounds more country with a clear taste of fiddle and banjo in the band, but this is still Steven Tyler’s voice. He even starts the song with his signature whoop. So, while the lyrics go on about the Fourth of July and Tom Petty and all those other themes that seem standard in a contemporary country song, the sound one hears still resembles that which we’ve associated with Aerosmith and rock and roll for the past 40 years.
Country music fans are going to be divided, as they have been for quite a while. Traditional country fans more closely identify with what the Grammy’s categorize as “American Roots” music, that acoustic-driven, old-school, nasal-toned, boot-and-stetson-wearing sound of Willie, Waylon, and the boys. There’s is the sound defined by Hank Williams, Sr., Little Jimmy Dickens, and Roy Acuff. Yet, even there we’ve seen some crossover. One of the artists nominated for this year’s Grammy for best American Roots song is none other than the Eagles’ Don Henley singing with country legend Merle Haggard.
Contemporary country has been courting rock music for a while. Think back to Garth Brooks and the controversy his rock-driven sound created some thirty-plus years ago. This week’s Billboard country chart includes artists such as Luke Bryan, Sam Hunt, and LoCash whose heavily produced songs don’t sound all that different from 80s and early 90s rock. Even artists once considered staunchly country, such as Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift, have more of a pop sound now than anything that might have once been considered anywhere close to old-fashioned country.
Obviously, music genres don’t stay the same forever; they change and evolve just like everything else on the planet. If Steven Tyler wants to call his new album country music, why stop him? After all, Aerosmith fans have grown older; we don’t rock as hard as we did in the 70s and 80s. Country music may be more our speed. At the same time, however, there’s a lot of tradition in country music that could be lost if the genre continues to merge so closely with rock that one has difficulty telling the difference.
I’m not the one to make the final call. I’ll put the link below and let you listen for yourself. Just remember that when one blends Country and Rock, what you get is a Crock, as in: full of …
Partial Truths, Whole Lies
Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. —George Orwell
When all we see is a sliver of the truth, do we assume that everything else is a lie?
I’ve spent the better part of two hours this morning looking through headlines and newspapers and magazine articles. Through all of it, the lyrics to Don Henley’s 1989 hit, Heart of the Matter, keep running through my mind:
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again
I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the Heart of the Matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
 Bonus points if you just sang that in your head as you read it.
For all the bulk of information available, I can’t help but have the feeling that I’m not getting the whole truth about anything. I know some articles, especially those shared on social media, are outright lies. Snopes helps weed out some of the most blantant attempts at deception, but their focus tends to lean toward simply outing the lies; they don’t necessarily bring us that much closer to the truth.
So, there’s a story this morning where the headline reads: Police: Virginia Officer Fataly Shot Day After Swearing In. My heart wants to break; the female officer had left the force for a few years, one would presume perhaps to start a family, and then returned. The story is tragic. Oh, but buried in the article is the fact that a “civilian,” also a woman, lost her life in the event as well. She may have been dead before police even arrived. Her name is not mentioned. The condition of the two other officers shot during the same altercation is not mentioned. A partial story, woefully incomplete. Tragedies on both counts, to be sure, but we don’t have the truth, which makes us susceptible to lies.
Anywhere there is a shadow of doubt, where there are questions not adequately answered, where the truth is not plainly evident, we are open to lies. People, and media, can tell us anything when there is an absence of known truth and even if the pieces to the story don’t fit well, there are always those inclined to believe, no matter how obvious the lie might be to those who stop and think a moment. This is why we have conspiracy theories, because in the absence of complete truth, our minds can imagine anything they want.
We can blame the Internet only in part. Granted, the fact that, once something happens, anywhere in the world, there is a rush to get information online, seems to inevitably lead to stories like the one above. When there is pressure to say something so that a media source does not appear out of the loop, even incomplete information seems to suffice. Yet, long before the Internet, there were shadows in the information we receive.
Don’t believe me? Tell me, who shot John F. Kennedy? The depths of the shadows surrounding that case cause us to question whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Sure, that is the official account, but even in Congressional testimonies there were enough lies and attempts to obsfucate the facts that we have reason to doubt official sources. Minus a sense of the truth, we make up our own: the FBI was behind it, the CIA did it, there was a monkey with a pea shooter on the grassy knowel. Anything might be the truth when we don’t know what the truth is.
Partial truths are foundational in advertising. Would you still buy a product if you know that doing so directly contributed to the deforestation of the rain forests, or that the product had blown up in 57 of 58 lab tests? The only place where “truth in advertising” really starts to have any meaning is with prescription medicines. I know everyone has seen the ad where 20 of the 30 seconds is spent telling you all the possible, horrible, death-inducing side effects. Yet, somehow, for some reason, those ads still work. If the truth that a medicine may cause “premature anal leakage” doesn’t keep us from wanting the product, why doesn’t the truth work elsewhere?
Because sometimes we would rather just believe the lies. When the truth runs in opposition to what we want, we’re willing to compromise. If we want to see a conspiracy, we’ll find one, even if it is totally fictional. A perfect example of this is the anti-GMO crowd. Guess what: GMOs are not only not killing you, they’re probably saving your life. Without GMOs, global food prices would sky rocket, making everything unaffordable, even the most basic of grains. Hunger, which is already a significant issue, would more than triple. Some foods would simply cease to exist. Yet, because we thrive on drama and enjoy believing that “they” are out to get us, millions of people choose to believe the lies about genetically modified organisms, totally ignoring the truth.
I won’t even start on how politicians contribute to and thrive upon partial truths and whole lies. No matter what I say, no matter what anyone says, we make up our minds based on emotion, not fact. We vote for the candidate that makes us feel better, not the one who might actually help the country the most. For that matter, we dont’ really have a clue what would help the country the most. All we have are partial truths and whole lies.
And conspiracy theories.
Watch, the next tme you see someone post a statement on Facebook in hopes that, by doing so, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates or Warren Buffect might give them money, see how many people buy into the lie, “just in case.” We know those stupid games are not true, but yet they spread like wildfire. We don’t want to believe the whole truth. We know the billionaires are rich and have a history of charitable giving, so we’re willing to take just that tiny sliver of partial truth as a basis for believing a wholesale lie.
The more I know, the less I understand.
Share this:
Like this: