Springsteen

I could write a long post about everything I think is wrong with country music today, but I generally think that diatribes against any type of music are ill-advised and end up making the critic (in this case, me) look worse than whatever he's criticizing, so instead of going into a lengthy disclaimer about how I don't usually like country music as defined by Toby Keith and Jason Aldean, I'll just stick to saying that I really do like the Eric Church song "Springsteen." I mean, I really like it. I really, really like it. And the thing is, it's not that different from all the songs currently playing on country radio that I don't like, but I think it's got a unique (-ish) melody and a nice chorus, and I'm mostly just glad that a thirtysomething male country singer decided to namedrop an artist other than Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, because it seems a lot more likely that the guys singing country today spent more time in their youth listening to singers like Bruce Springsteen than the scratchy recordings of guys making music fifty years ago. I understand that part of being a country singer today is proving your country credibility, but I find it a little disingenuous how guys like Aldean (and "guys like Aldean" describes roughly fifty percent of country music right now) seem to skip right over the superstars of their youth, people like Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire and, yes, Shania Twain, and act like they owe everything to way-back singers like Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings, people whose music actually bears very little resemblance to their own -- sort of the way Chris Martin from Coldplay is always going on and on about The Beatles, when we all know he owes a lot more to Radiohead.

But "Springsteen"! I like it! I wish they would play it more on the country station in my town, but then that would mean less time to play Luke Bryan's "I Don't Want This Night to End," which makes me want to jump off a bridge. I'm less excited about the video -- I like that it uses real-looking people (credit where credit is due, a lot of country artists are good about using real-looking people in their videos), and I like that it captures the feeling of nighttime in the song, as well as the chilly sound of the piano notes (which is ironic, since the song is about a "July Saturday night"), but it's also set in one of those modern, tree-less neighborhoods that make me feel like I can't breathe just to look at them, and the chronology is pretty wonky: there's no way the guy or the girl in the video are seventeen, and the video seems to be set in present time, yet the song is set in the past, back when people made mix tapes instead of CDs, so...who knows. I have now put way too much thought into this. I like the song! And the kid on the bike in the video is a nice touch.