Hank Williams Jr – A Country Boy Can Survive
Along with Family Tradition, this is Hank Jr’s most streamed song via Spotify stats, which has thus survived four decades since its release in 1982 when it could not overtake songs by Rosanne Cash and Charley Pride to top the charts. It did come back into circulation in 1999 and 2001 when Hank Jr respectively teamed up with Chad Brock for a Y2K version and, after the September 11 attacks, changed the lyric to America Will Survive.
Over a dropped-tuned guitar in the key of D, we open with an image of end of days from a preacher, with muggings downtown and a falling stock market. A sitar line answers the narrator in the opening verse, who sings of living ‘back in the woods’ with ‘a shotgun, a rifle and a four-wheel drive’. Whenever he wants, he can plough his field, ‘skin a buck’, ‘catch catfish’ and ‘run a trotline’. He can also make his own wine and whiskey and ‘grow good ole tomatoes’, having been taught by his grandpa ‘to live off the land’.
Hank Jr’s narrator namechecks the Mississippi river, the coalmines of West Virginia and the Rocky Mountains, as well as ‘North California and South Alabam’. He contrasts these places with a friend in New York; he ‘never called me by my name, just “hillbilly”’ and kept sending him images of ‘Broadway nights’ to entice Hank Jr to the big city.
Looking back to the mention of muggings in the opening verse, his friend was stabbed for $43 in cash; the narrator might seek revenge for this attack and ‘spit some Beech-Nut in that dude’s eye’, referring to chewed tobacco. This underlines how country folk have become accustomed to fighting for themselves, although the line can also be read as a dig about city folk.
Across a century of commercial country music, this dialogue between rural and urban has often taken place, with pros and cons for both sides. Like Okie from Muskogee by Merle Haggard, this song has lasted because of its huge affinity for ‘country folks’ as well as the boy of the title: ‘You can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run…we say grace and we say “ma’am”’. The arrangement never explodes, rumbling along like a truck and with a swamp guitar line to match the sitar. Hank Jr’s final note, on the word ‘survive’, is excellent.
Alan Jackson – Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow
Of all the number ones Jackson had, this song was not one of them; in December 1990, it was impeded by I’ve Come to Expect It from You by George Strait. Jackson’s song was the fourth single from his album Here in the Real World, so perhaps people did not want to buy a tune they already owned.
Written with Jim McBride, it is a song about playing bars as an up-and-comer, ‘living that honky-tonk dream…just wanna be heard and seen’. The first verse is packed full of music being played or heard: country shows on the radio, mama singing ‘that sweet harmony’ and baby Alan hearing ‘the crying of a steel guitar’ in the cradle. Thus, as his narrator sings in the chorus, ‘all I’ve ever wanted is to pick this guitar and sing’.
The second verse describes the reality of the dream: ‘an atlas and a coffee cup, five pickers in an old Dodge Truck’, our narrator on the way to play a show in Houston even though ‘half the time I sing for free’. The conversational nature of the lyric increases the listener’s empathy: ‘well this overhead is killing me’, ‘Lord it makes this thing I’m doing seem right’.
What else makes it worth it is when ‘the crowd’s into it’; although his mama ‘worries’ about how he has taken his love of music ‘this far’, Jackson’s narrator has ‘made it up to Music Row’. By the time he mentions this during the final verse, the key has changed from G to A, giving it a much brighter feel with more sharps in the key signature. The same father who won a radio in a contest tells his son: ‘I just know we’re going to hear you singing on it someday’.
As with the Hank Jr anthem, it appears that the singer is the character of his own song, and it is one that would sound great in the bars with those very same neon rainbows. It would also be covered by acts who, as Jackson himself did, are chasing success too, perhaps having heard Jackson on the radio. Luke Combs, for instance, picked up on the song’s lyrical idea in his song Honky Tonk Highway.
Kenny Chesney – Big Star
Continuing with songs about musical dreams, this was the fourth single from Chesney’s album No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems. Darryl Worley’s patriotic song Have You Forgotten? kept this song at number two. When he was recording his live album, Chesney brought out Taylor Swift to be the female protagonist of a song he narrates, which was written by Stephony Smith, who also wrote It’s Your Love for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.
Beginning with a chugging riff, this country-rock hybrid has defined the Kenny Chesney Stadium Sound for two decades. We open with a girl overcoming ‘her insecurities’ to sing karaoke at Banana Joe’s, and soon she is a TV star who attracts groupies. The rhyme ‘she belted it/she melted them’ in the first bridge becomes ‘signed autographs/in the aftermath’ in the second; in the latter, Garth Brooks is namechecked to recall his famous CMA Fest marathon signing session.
Even if, as the middle section suggests, ‘her high school girlfriends cut her down’ and her neighbours believe ‘she slept her way to the top’, our Big Star sings to ’20,000 plus’ after a pre-gig caviar supper. There’s also a new chord on ‘she doesn’t care anymore’ and a quiet few bars at the start of the third verse where the guitar chords go choppy to underscore the song’s message: ‘You don’t get where you’re going ‘less you got something they ain’t got’. This is followed by a punchy pair of chords over the first notes of the line ‘so she sings tonight’.
The chorus, which begins with the same two-chord riff as the verse and includes some clapalong percussion, includes some advice to aspiring big stars: ‘If you work hard…it feels good in the hot spotlight’. Those girls are mentioned in the third verse saying ‘that could be us’, who might take the song’s offering of skill and tenacity to heart and start chasing that neon rainbow or, as here, heading straight to the karaoke bar.
Kelsea Ballerini – Hole in the Bottle
One of those girls inspired by big stars like Taylor Swift, Kelsea writes her own songs and sells them with panache, although having a radio promo guy for a dad has also helped her cause. Shania Twain appeared on a version of this song, which got to number six on the Hot Country charts and made the top 40 of the Hot 100. It was held off number one at radio by Better Together by Luke Combs.
The song begins with a spoken-word intro from a mock instruction tape. The first verse is then driven by a funky guitar riff that loops around and around with a digital drum loop joining in the chorus, on which Kelsea sings: ‘There’s a hole in the bottle drinkin’ all this wine’. In the coda, she laments how ‘she can’t even find the hole in the bottle of wine’. It’s good fun and her vocal is full of character.
The verses frame the idea that she is drinking to forget an old flame (‘honey no, I don’t miss him’), although she won’t cry because ‘tears would water down’ her bottle of red. ‘I just came here to unwind’, ‘this Cabernet has a way of vanishing on me’, ‘now this one’s halfway gone and it’s barely even open!’ are all, as the term goes, written to the title.
In the modern fashion, the song is credited to five writers including melody specialists Steph Jones and Hillary Lindsey, the latter who also finesses the song with backing vocals. The other two writers are track guy Jesse Frasure and all-round behemoth Ashley Gorley. Derek Wells adds a terrific guitar solo too.
It might well have been written to order as something for bachelorettes to bellow along to on Lower Broadway, albeit once the world had opened up after the Covid-19 pandemic. Thanks to a hooky melody that is hard to dislodge, it also made the top 40 of the Hot 100.
A Country Way of Life 