Country Music Strikes Again

Country music has a long and well earned reputation for titles and lyrics that state the obvious in a way only a country mama could love. The Roy Clark classic, “Thank God and Greyhound She’s Gone” managed to pay homage to the Good Lord and the cheapest form of mass transit at the time – and it even managed to get in a sideways reference to dogs.

One of the factors that makes country music so funny is that you can actually understand the lyrics. Rock protects itself by being unintelligible or we would have as many laughs there. Hip-hop just creates new slang with every song so the filler between gratuitous profanity makes absolutely no sense to anyone without the current day’s version of the Urban Dictionary.

A contemporary Joe Nichols song comes close to matching the standard of the greats like Roy Clark. His song, “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off” leaves little to the imagination and takes all the work from the rest of the lyrics. Still, by the time he is done describing all the clothes she loses, before she takes her first shot she would have been ready for a stroll along the lakefront in Chicago during January.

Nichols also has the song “She Only Smokes When She Drinks.” With him as a boyfriend, she’s going to have lung cancer soon or spontaneously combust depending on which angle he was taking with the smoking reference.

If she’s the same girl whose clothes fall off, then she probably has no tan line, but terrible smoker’s mouth.

Meanwhile Steve Holy demonstrates that he is anything but with his song, “Brand New Girlfriend.” He enjoys the beach with her while wearing nothing but smiles and playing “kissy kissy smoochie smoochie” while talking “mushy mushy about nothing.”

Maybe that’s why I don’t have a boyfriend: I’m good at “kissy kissy smoochie smoochie,” but I just don’t do “mushy mushy nothing” well.

Holy’s ex-girlfriend didn’t do the mushy well either. She got serious a bit and that’s why she’s his ex.

I need to learn to do mushy, but I don’t even know where to begin since those who do it to me instantly get on my last nerve – not that they have to go through to many to get there. I don’t have the vocabulary for sweet nothings. Is there any kind of Urban Dictionary for nothings?

I’ll just listen to politicians – that will get me started on nothing.