Top of the Country: Time’s Ticking

We’ve got a new Top of the Country this week with “Time’s Ticking” by Justin Moore.

As Billboard points out, there’s irony here in the title since “Time’s Ticking” now has the record for the longest amount of time on the charts to reach the number 1 spot.

Less ironically, this song opens with a blast of classic Country music references. Including references to Ray Scott’s “Long Black Cadillac” (itself a nod to Dwight Yoakam’s “Long White Cadillac” and Josh Turner’s “Long Black Train“), George Jones’s “Corvette Song“, and Luke Bryan’s “Drink a Beer“, “Time’s Ticking” fits nicely in the mainstream of Country music.

Like many Country songs that involve facing death, “Time’s Ticking” bends towards the reflective and pensive. And like many Country songs it lands in a place that is at least partly true: we are all going to die, and we should be sure that we are using our time on this earth well. We certainly should

“call your mama, kiss your babies
Pick the one some roadside daisies
Drink a beer with back-home buddies
Make a memory, not just money”

But this is also just a starting point, not an ending one. The reality, contra “Time’s Ticking” is that we are not just in need of “a little fixing”, we are actually broken. Heck, we’re dead short of repentance and faith in the Gospel. So as is often the case in Country, this song is an excellent place to start thinking about the reality of our lives in the world (and especially life in rural America). But we need to be sure that we step from these reflections into the deeper truths of our need for salvation. Death comes for us all. We must prepare if we are to face it with confidence. So much “Time’s Ticking” gets right.

So definitely give this one a listen, just don’t stop with it.

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.