Small Town Stereotypes on Steroids
My frustration with the cookie-cutter culture of country music songwriting
Small towns are at the heart of many American songs.
For instance, John Mellencamp’s Small Town is a classic nod to life in the slow lane on Main Street. Full of wholesome goodness.
Well, I was born in a small town
And I can breathe in a small town
Gonna die in a small town
Oh, and that's probably where they'll bury me, yeah
My Little Town, by Paul Simon, laments about “dreamin’ of glory” because there’s “nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town.”
In Paradise, John Prine recounts childhood visits to his father’s “backwards old town” in Western Kentucky, “where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols. But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.”
All of these ‘small town’ examples are from rock and folk music artists.
Country music is overwhelming in its homage to the American ways of rural life, before being forced to leave to seek opportunity and urban employment. Too many folks find that living in the city is a little rougher than hanging out on the backroads.
In music, there is a wide dichotomy between urban and rural offerings. Gil Scott-Heron and Marvin Gaye created classics singing about urban decay and death. Rap music came from upstart street poets that expressed the dissatisfaction of living conditions in the city.
In contrast, the last few decades of mainstream country music is characterized by a love of rural life as expressed in nationalistic symbols such as blue jeans, cold beer, dirt roads and pretty trucks. All of these things are not bad, they just don’t make for much variety in songwriting.
Listen to the following for a quick lesson in ‘Bro Country’:
The Nashville Bubble Dilemma
Country music is a great American genre. It emerged from the foothills, flatlands and heartland to tell the stories of hardships, faith, family and falling in love.
When you listen to Merle Haggard’s Mama Tried, it conveys a lifetime of sorrow and regret. Even Dolly Parton’s Jolene is a unique plea to ask another woman to stay away from her man. These songs portray simple truth and real pain.
It seems nowadays that all country roads lead to Nashville, Tennessee, where thousands of songwriters try to match up their songs to a popular recording artist. It’s a strange symbiotic relationship that keeps the commercial hits flowing in to provide generic concert content and steady royalty paychecks.
Songwriters pitch their latest creations to publishing agencies or specific country artists in the hope that they land a song on a new record. It’s a hard slog and living in the song factory to finally get a chart-topping hit. The odds against success are enormous.
So, why take the risk on writing songs outside the mainstream? That’s a gutsy and, mostly, unprofitable move.
Here are a couple of YouTube examples that bemoan the worn out path of contemporary country music.
The Good, The Bad and The Blame
The furor over Jason Aldean’s Try That In A Small Town stems from both the long played out rural-urban divide and the more recent ultra tribal partition of American politics.
Rural means red, red means Republican, Republican means conservative, conservative means gun rights, gun rights mean thin Blue line, which equates to support for law enforcement.
Such is the simplistic reasoning that keeps Americans angry at each other. It’s a political ploy that works.
Let’s observe a few lyrics from the song and see what all the bickering is about.
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya likeCuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you're toughWell, try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small townGot a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they're gonna round up
Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck
The first four lines make reference to incidents that occur, mostly, in urban cities. Thanks to YouTube and TikTok, the entire nation gets to witness the worst of urban bad behavior.
Next, the songwriters revert to classic country clichés of flag stompin’ and cop spittin’. These are setup lines that set the moral tone to trap good ol’ boys into a patriotic frenzy.
The rest of the lyrics make the usual boast that small town folk protect their own from outsiders. And that there are plenty of guns around to take care of business country-style. There’s even the unveiled threat to “See how far ya make it down the road”.
And of course, it finishes with the ultimate badass warning, “Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck”.
None of this makes good sense, but it does make good money.
Jason Aldean is the song’s performer. There are four others credited as the songwriters: Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy, and Kurt Michael Allison.
This is evidence of the Nashville curse. These four co-songwriters need to eat. That means they are not going to jeopardize their livelihood by abandoning the tried and true country themes. It’s a cash cow cycle of mediocrity.
Watch the video and observe how the imagery plays into the stereotypes. There are also some historical racial issues associated with the courthouse setting. Whether this was intentional or not is unknown.
Coda
Too much music, in all genres, suffers from sameness. It’s the proven formula strategy over artistic expression. To be honest, Try This In A Small Town is not cookie-cutter in the Bro Country sense.
But the song is reliant on too many stereotypes to sell the record.
Despite all the commotion over Jason Aldean, another small town hero emerged recently that feels more original and organic. Oliver Anthony, an industrial plant salesman, arose out of the fertile soils of the Virginia Piedmont to bring us “Rich Men North of Richmond”.
What a refreshing change of pace from the normal bland offerings of the country music scene.
====================================
If you like the songs and/or essays, please help me distribute them by sharing and following me on Twitter, Substack and Instagram. Check out my original songs here.
I appreciate your time and support in this endeavor.