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writerkitI have often said I do not like musicians, as such. I like individual songs, and in most cases I don't like the majority of the musician's catalog, just one or two songs. There are, of course, exceptions-- Heather Dale, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Taylor Swift... but they're the minority.
This is especially true of that breed of modern country that's all about Trucks'n'Girls'n'God'nBeer. It has produced the occasional song I like and a lot of songs that all sound exactly the same-- they're the songs that are about "And we drink alcohol and go to parties and make out."
What prompted this observation? Kenny Chesney has once again managed to produce a song that speaks for me: the magnificent "Everyone She Knows," which captures perfectly the life stage I'm presently in.
By all rights, Kenny Chesney should be one of the Beer Anthem People, based on a lot of the subject matter of his songs. He sings a lot about hitting the beach with a girl and getting drunk and has hits like "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems" and "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy." But he started in the nineties and was singing these songs well before the Trucks'n'etc. music, so while he has done some Beer Anthem-ing, he often manages to avoid it even when he's singing on the usual Beer Anthem subjects.
He's not someone who necessarily falls into the "I like this musician" exception, since I have not heard many of his songs beyond the ones that were radio hits. And he was not the first one to resonate with me enough to notice the name attached to the song. (That honor goes to Faith Hill, whose music I blasted from my very first boom box in elementary school.) But he was certainly formative, in a way a lot of musicians are not. He managed to produce songs to delight and fascinate when I was young-- "Anything But Mine" and "Who You'd Be Today" were two of the first songs I purchased for the iPod shuffle I was given for my fourteenth birthday-- and then more recently he's had "Better Boat" and the previously mentioned "Everyone She Knows"... and "Better Boat" walked me through some absolutely hellish mental health episodes, because oh look the big manly country star is singing about talking about your mental struggles with your friends so I should remember that I can also do that.
So, yeah, go check out "Everyone She Knows"; it's pretty awesome.
This is especially true of that breed of modern country that's all about Trucks'n'Girls'n'God'nBeer. It has produced the occasional song I like and a lot of songs that all sound exactly the same-- they're the songs that are about "And we drink alcohol and go to parties and make out."
What prompted this observation? Kenny Chesney has once again managed to produce a song that speaks for me: the magnificent "Everyone She Knows," which captures perfectly the life stage I'm presently in.
By all rights, Kenny Chesney should be one of the Beer Anthem People, based on a lot of the subject matter of his songs. He sings a lot about hitting the beach with a girl and getting drunk and has hits like "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems" and "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy." But he started in the nineties and was singing these songs well before the Trucks'n'etc. music, so while he has done some Beer Anthem-ing, he often manages to avoid it even when he's singing on the usual Beer Anthem subjects.
He's not someone who necessarily falls into the "I like this musician" exception, since I have not heard many of his songs beyond the ones that were radio hits. And he was not the first one to resonate with me enough to notice the name attached to the song. (That honor goes to Faith Hill, whose music I blasted from my very first boom box in elementary school.) But he was certainly formative, in a way a lot of musicians are not. He managed to produce songs to delight and fascinate when I was young-- "Anything But Mine" and "Who You'd Be Today" were two of the first songs I purchased for the iPod shuffle I was given for my fourteenth birthday-- and then more recently he's had "Better Boat" and the previously mentioned "Everyone She Knows"... and "Better Boat" walked me through some absolutely hellish mental health episodes, because oh look the big manly country star is singing about talking about your mental struggles with your friends so I should remember that I can also do that.
So, yeah, go check out "Everyone She Knows"; it's pretty awesome.
