#349) "I Let Her Lie" by Daryle Singletary - The best country songs are the ones that don't spew redneck braggadocio, or self-righteous nonsense about bad behavior and good times being strung together by the uber patriotic act of keeping a job and raising kids, but instead paint a reliable portrait of rural or small town life as it actually exists. Make no mistake, this doesn't always have to be a portrait of misery and sorrow, in other words, the woman doesn't always have to be leaving and taking the kids and the dog with her, but life is a shit sandwich sometimes, and I know from experience there is a unique flavor to the main ingredient of that sandwich when you live in a small town, which is not always captured by every country ballad that comes down the pike. I've said it many times: the best country ballads, the ones that really get at the heart of a matter, tell truth in a moving, memorable way, are as much folk songs as anything.
There's no braggadocio in "I Let Her Lie", not much of anything deserving to be called drama, for that matter. Just an anguish as intimately dull as a cloudy Wednesday afternoon on Main Street, where traffic is never anything more than light and the local gift shop didn't have a single customer all morning. It is here, in the town where the pace is a little slower because not much ever happens, where a romantic relationship that has started to show signs of its death throes bears its sharpest claws.
There are lots of songs about breakups and failed relationships, particularly in country music, but "I Let Her Lie" has always struck an especially potent chord with me. Maybe because it concerns itself with the response, rather than what is happening. In the song, the woman is cheating, the man is suffering - all too easy in this bad ol' world to shrug and say, "Natch." - but in this instance, the man's response isn't all that decisive, because in real life it wouldn't be. It would be informed - distracted - by a host of complex and contradictory emotions, and it's this balk that has created the heartache, the regret, the confusion. There comes the inevitable gossip, because it's a small town after all, and the more talk there is floating around a small town, in and out of bars and work places and that Main Street gift shop, the owner of which almost certainly knows someone who knows someone who knows you, the harder it is to make the move you know you will eventually have to make.
I get it. In some measure, to some extent, long ago, I was there. "I Let Her Lie" will always serve as a totem to that specific time in my life.
And isn't that what songs are meant for? ;-)
"We were that small town scandal, but she was my only world..."
#350) "Goin' Up the Country" by Canned Heat - It's all in the voice, I'd say. The late but fairly great Alan Wilson lent his distinctive vocal style to the two Canned Heat songs most people remember. Wilson overdosed in 1970 (a member of that lamentable "27" club, actually), but left behind the quintessential counterculture anthem, although in actuality, the song has a deep musical history dating back to the 1920s. But this version, with updated lyrics that reflect the times in which it was recorded, has other nifty things going on - a spunky bass line and spritely flute line are held together by the tautest drum line, all of which weirdly (but splendidly) complement Wilson's froggy vocals. Fifty years on, "Goin' Up the Country" is simply fun to listen to, and though on one hand it's pretty dated, from another point of view it's entirely timeless.
"We might even leave the USA / 'Cause there's a brand new game that I don't want to play...."
