Okay fine, it’s a series. Apparently I’m going to work through the top Country songs this year. This week I’m covering Hardy’s “Favorite Country Song.”
If you’re not familiar with him, Hardy is an interesting guy to listen to. He’s usually got his tongue firmly in his cheek, and is usually more concerned with violating the conventions of Country music than with staying in the lines. (Though he can do a standard Country song–even a good one.) This can mean recording what is functionally a metal song and filling it with Country tropes and imagery. It can mean “The Worst Country Song of All Time” with Brantley Gilbert and Toby Keith. Or it can mean just a little bit “Rednecker” than you.
The point is, Hardy knows the rules and cheerfully plows through them on his way to make some solid music. “Favorite Country Song” is a great example. We are on the back side of a wave of nostalgia Country music. There are a lot of songs out there celebrating the great moments of Country music from the past forty years.
As we might expect, this song blows through those lines and does something completely different. Right off the bat we get a list of Country songs:
Summertime, Chicken Fried, Mama TriedCountry Boy, Country Boy Can SurviveOh, Marina, My Maria, and My AmyOutskirts Of Heaven and Sinners Like Me
Which is the best Country song? Well, that’s where we’re thrown the curveball. These might be great songs, but “they sure don’t hold no candle to”
A north wind blowin’ through a patch of pinesWhippoorwills singin’ ’bout summertimeRaindrops drummin’ on rusted tinFlathead draggin’ out 20 pound StrenOh-whoa, strike up the fire, somebody cue the crickets in the creek bank choirGotta get back ’cause it’s been too longThat’s my favorite country song
The snotty read is that the songs listed in the first verse are all worse than listening to nothing at all. The less-snotty read (and let’s take the less-snotty approach) is that the sound of nature, the song that “I know it that the good Lord wrote it/ For a good ol’ boy like me” is, like Country music, something that speaks to us all.
And by the way, that line I just quoted is a great line. It is a nod to Don Williams’ song “Good ole boys like me.” This song also talks about the music of nature: “I can still hear the soft southern winds in the live oak trees.” Both songs remind us of the noise and the quiet of the natural world, away from the clutter and bustle of the cities and steeped in the midst of God’s creation.
There are lots of nods like this in “Favorite Country Song”, and it definitely rewards a relisten. For that matter, sitting and listening to the sounds of rain on the roof and whippoorwills in the summer also merit our attention, and Psalm 19 makes very clear.
Dr. Coyle Neal co-hosts the City of Man Podcast and is an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog). He teaches Political Science, Philosophy, and History in Southwest Missouri.
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