The Happy, Sad, And Corny Sides Of The Country Top 10

As part of Idolator’s continuing effort to geekily analyze every music chart known to man, we present a new edition of Project X, in which Jackin’ Pop editor Michaelangelo Matos breaks down rankings from every genre imaginable. After the click-through, he sorts through the June 30 issue of Billboard‘s country chart:

This past weekend, I attended a listening party. The theme was Funny and Sad–each attendee chose one song for each mood, and we alternated between “funny” and “sad” songs all night. One friend chose two George Jones songs, noting that Music Row has long been the repository of more funny and more sad songs, and for longer, than any single source. Appropriately, he said this right after I’d begun listening to Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs Top 10 for June 30, 2007:

1. Brad Paisley, “Ticks” (Arista Nashville) 2. Tracy Lawrence, “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” (Rocky Comfort) 3. Montgomery Gentry, “Lucky Man” (Columbia) 4. George Strait, “Wrapped” (MCA Nashville) 5. Emerson Drive, “Moments” (Midas) 6. Big & Rich, “Lost in This Moment” (Warner Bros.) 7. Billy Currington, “Good Directions” (Mercury) 8. Keith Urban, “I Told You So” (Capitol Nashville) 9. Alan Jackson, “A Woman’s Love” (Arista Nashville) 10. Jake Owen, “Startin’ With Me” (RCA)

Certainly the most popular country tune of the week is also the funniest–and the best, which is a nice coincidence. “I’d like to see the other half/Of your butterfly tattoo” is wry-ribald enough, but the prize is how “Kiss you way back in the sticks” insinuates something a little closer to the bushes. That and the title pest, which Brad would like to inspect you for. And the song lets the guitarist (Paisley himself, I presume) go country-funk nuts.

There’s one line in the chorus that mars Tracy Lawrence’s “Find Out Who your Friends Are” (No. 2)–“they just show on up,” fine, “with their big old hearts,” ewww. That’s indicative of the song’s overall weaknesses, which it mostly overcomes anyway. Lawrence’s reedy voice and elastic intonation are a lot of why; the most instantly ingratiating musical bed of the Top 10 helps, too. This might make the song an exceptionally well-produced prime-time Christmas special, but Lawrence’s ad-libbed, “Man, I’ve been there” during the fade (very close to the end, probably not very hearable on the radio) gives the idea he could go even deeper.

The appeal of Montgomery Gentry’s “Lucky Man” is pretty obvious even to a skeptic: strong-voiced lead, unashamedly upper-middle-class-suburban humanist-realist P.O.V., easy melody, hidden-genius piano. Still, this obviousness is the part of the style I’m uneasiest with, probably because my upbringing was decidedly not middle class. That goes for the George Strait song at No. 4, too. Paying close attention to the second verse of “Wrapped” has me hearing all kinds of nuances in his delivery, but you also notice that the chorus is as humdrum as it comes–“You’ve got me wrapped, around, your pretty little finger”–and decide that even if Strait isn’t coasting, everything surrounding him is. Ditto Alan Jackson at No. 9, though Jackson’s singing has been explicable to me for a while now and the track has a rather wonderful harmonized guitar solo.

True corn arrives midway through the list, with Emerson Drive’s “Moments,” in which the narrator encounters a homeless man. With singing to match, the lyric has lots of details, and its basic emotional shading could be colored in with a Crayola 8-pack; the out-of-nowhere specificity of the line “I know somewhere ’round a trash can fire tonight” made me laugh with relief.

I should probably be happier that Big & Rich have another radio hit their third time around–“Save a Horse” made No. 11 Country three years ago, but the group looked precariously like a one-shot. But “Lost in This Moment” is precisely what Big & Rich seemed like they were trying to move past when they debuted–the Nashville status quo. Weirdly, the most exotic-sounding thing in a Top 10 that features Big & Rich belongs to Keith Urban, whose “I Told You So” is built on a funk guitar, breakbeat, and Irish-folk violins–it ends with an extended rock solo. The result is surprisingly impassioned, like Urban and pals are so psyched to be playing hacky rock that they can’t help but give it their all.

I was startled at first by the bluntness of the opening verse of Jake Owen’s “Startin’ With Me” (No. 10) that it took a while to realize how stock it is. Our narrator sleeps with his “best friend’s baby sister,” hocks his grandpa’s guitar, punches his dad over the holidays only to have the old man die soon after–the whole nine yards. Verdict via power-ballad chorus: It’s all his fault. Upshot: At least he knows it’s all his fault. Funny? Not really–which doesn’t necessarily make it Sad, either.