In an earlier entry I said how much I liked Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast (I actually said that I wanted to be Gladwell). It’s amazing how often something happens that reminds me of a topic he covered, or an insight he shared. And yet, the episode that is most firmly planted in my mind is one I thought was his weakest. I’m not sure what that says about me.
In Season 2, Episode 6, Gladwell interviewed Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock in an episode called King of Tears. As you can probably tell from the title, Braddock is known for writing some of the saddest country songs ever. His songs include D I V O R C E, which was a hit for Tammy Wynette, and He Stopped Loving Her Today, most famously done by George Jones. If, like me, you’ve never heard of these songs, trust me, they are real weepers.
The point of the episode was that country music could be truly sad because it deals with real life situations. Rock music, on the other hand, was dismissed as full of cliches that can’t really tap into melancholy. Rock provides “hymns to extroversion” with little emotional depth, while country revels in the sadness, or so says Gladwell.
You are probably thinking that, being the lifelong Rock and Roll fan that I am, I disagree with this comparison, and that there lies my dissatisfaction with the episode, but you would be wrong. I actually agree that rock does not lend itself to melancholy as well as country. (I struggled to come up with sad rock songs beyond Clapton’s Tears from Heaven). My problem with Gladwell is that he uses this banal observation to brand rock as a lesser music. Plus, he misses the much more interesting question as to why country singers and their fans gravitate to these songs.
Gladwell begins his assault on rock by delivering a monotone rendering of Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti, as if to say “see how stupid rock lyrics are”. He then compares The Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses to Emmy Lou Harris’s From Boulder to Birmingham, which is about the death of Gram Parsons (who, ironically, did a great version of Wild Horses), as if picking two songs at random proves anything about the thousands and thousands of songs written in either genre. In trying to force his point, Gladwell dismisses Wild Horses as generic, and even pretends not to understand the lyrics (you can say a lot about RS lyrics, but mysterious they are not!!!).
The fact that rock does not do sad as well as country is no reason to dismiss it, as the songs Gladwell chose show. Yes, the lyrics to Tutti Frutti are meaningless, but who has ever listened to Tutti Frutti for the lyrics? How could he possibly think that a monotone recitation of that song in any way reflects the raw energy of Little Richard, which is why the song is so enduring and influential? Similarly, Jagger’s lament on the Wild Horses chorus is gut wrenching and sticks with you long after the song ends. It is, frankly, bizarre to hold up these two powerful songs as a reason to denigrate rock.
More interesting is why country lends itself to sad songs. Gladwell provides a clue, and then proceeds, clueless. Braddock, he points out, grew up in Florida, in a Church of Christ congregation, what Gladwell calls “the most fundamental of fundamentalist churches”. He then goes on to point out that all of the country stars who produced what are thought to be the greatest country songs of all time grew up in the Bible Belt. While he doesn’t go further, my guess is that most were either nurtured in the Southern churches, or at least heavily influenced by them.
We have been taught to make fun of over-emotional Southern preachers. (My favorite parody has always been that of Robin Williams). Yet we underestimate the appeal of that style. It is raw. It is in your face. What is being said is almost secondary. What matters is that the emotions are stirred, and that the congregation FEELS the truth of the Word. And in that, it is effective.
When I was a Freshman at the University of South Carolina, I was taken to a Southern Baptist Church outside of Columbia and experienced that emotive power. The congregation was fully engaged, urging the preacher on, responding to his exhortations. As the product of a staid German Baptist Church, where a murmured “amen” was considered an outburst, I was floored. It was too wild, too fevered, too passionate for 17-year-old who had always bottled up his emotions. And, yet, it has always stuck with me.
It strikes me that the ties between that emotional worship style, and the emotion filled songs coming from the country singers who grew up in that atmosphere are not coincidental. The people in the congregation at that church I attended wore their hearts on their sleeves, just as Bobby Braddock does in his songs. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is no connection, but at least that would have been something worth Gladwell exploring.
Country and rock are two different worlds. At times they crossover one to the other, but usually come from contrasting places. Country is an American genre, rock is international (hard to picture a country British Invasion). Rock seeks to blend divergent styles, including country at times. Country knows what it does best, and sticks to it.
I will never be a country music fan. The plaintive, woeful, heartsick Braddock songs just do not stir me the way that a David Bowie or Talking Heads rocker does. Yet, as I’ve grown older, I have learned to at least appreciate where those songs come from, and be less dismissive. The emotions are real, the best renditions are sincere. Sometimes you just have to get out of your comfort zone, and just let out a loud AMEN!!!
