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Cynics like to say that whomever the story belongs to, it will probably deal with trucks, trains, prison, drinking (or moonshine), women misbehaving ("slippin' around" in the country vernacular) or death. The ideal country song might be about a guy who finally gets out of prison, hops a truck home, finds that his wife is slippin' around, gets drunk, and staggers to his doom in front of a highballing freight.
Vanilla Sameness. The music itself, at least as purveyed by many of the superstars of Nashville and Bakersfield, has a vanilla sameness to it that often does not reflect the pain and sorrow of the words. The voices of the singers are often less charged with emotion than their blues and rock counterparts. Most male country stars have deep bass baritones that seem to say: this man sits tall in the saddle. Women stars tend to have bright, unstrained sopranos—or a Lynn Anderson land of nasal chirpiness—that rule out not only women's lib but any other kind of defiance. In the past, country lyrics have been astonishingly repressive. Blind loyalty to husband, parents, even political leaders has been a common theme. When men have sung about women, the subject (always excepting long-suffering Mother) has often been the pain, not the pleasure.
Today, however, country is taking on a new sound, and a new diversity and message as well. Partly that is due to the influence of rock, partly to the visible softening of the once strong accents of American regionalization. Says Kris Kristofferson, 37, the former Rhodes scholar who is now a leader of country's progressive wing: "There's really more honesty and less bullshit in today's music than ever before."
This honesty ranges from Waylon Jennings' song of adultery in This Time ("I won't allow the things you used to do!/ You'll have to toe the mark and walk the line") to Tammy Wynette's look at one of its sometime results in DIVORCE.
Merle Haggard calls country lyrics "just journalism put to music." That definition suits some recent hits particularly well. There have been songs about ecology (One Hundred Children, Sonic Bummer, Don't Go Near the Water), welfare (Geronimo's Cadillac), amorphous doubts about politics and leadership (Vermont Suite: More Cows Than People) and alcoholism (Pay No Attention to Alice). Haggard's Irma Jackson is a touching look at interracial love ("There's no way the world will understand that love is colorblind/ That's why Irma Jackson can't be mine"). Tanya Tucker sings I Believe the South Is Gonna Rise Again, about a harmonious new society of blacks and whites:
The Jacksons down the road were poor like we were
But our skin was white and theirs was black ...
A brand-new breeze is blowin' cross the southland,
And I see a brand-new kind of brotherhood.
In Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott, the Statler Brothers examine the plight of the movie-oriented family man who must plow through G, PG, R and, especially, X ratings:
Everybody's trying to make a comment
About our doubts and fears.
True Grit's the only movie
I've really understood in years.
You 've got to take your analyst along
To see if it's fit to see.
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott