then again, he wouldn’t be the first one. i still enjoy brad paisley’s or tracy byrd’s efforts in this particular field:

pink flamingos
lifestyles of the not so rich and famous

Or, as they say in Texas, “All hat and no cattle.”

That’s actually a really good statement.

I’ve spent the vast majority of my life, as I call it, in the sub-rural fringe (rural area on the edge of suburbia). Yeah, I lived *near* a farm, not on one. Everyone seems to drive a truck. Hunting and fishing are just things everyone seems to enjoy. I wasn’t a country music fan for most of my life. But until I heard all these country pride/redneck songs, I had no idea concept that I lived in some special haven of rural activity. It was just the way it was…

Not to harp on that same issue any longer, so I’ll add something else to this discussion:

Whoever is choosing singles for Justin Moore is, for a lack of a better word, an idiot. I’m not saying his first CD or his most recent were “good”, but there have almost always been better options. Especially on the newest, ‘Outlaws Like Me’. This is probably the second worst song on the entire CD (Sunshine Babies is probably the worst…). How it was selected ahead of songs that while not great are infinitely more serviceable lyrically is just mind boggling to me.

For actual country people I imagine that life isn’t rural life, it’s just life.

I haven’t heard this song, but the lyrics are bad enough. After “Small Town U.S.A.” and “Backwoods,” I pretty much dismissed Justin Moore as some cynical record executive’s caricature of traditional country music.

I’m a WOC who’s spent my whole life in the suburbs and city of MD and DC and started receiving explict messages (some of which were identical to songs like “Bait a Hook”) from my environment at a very young age that, not only was this music not for or about me, but country folks don’t want me listening to it anyway. And therefore, I could never understand or relate to it, and had no right to listen to or enjoy it. I still hear this all the time! These messages never made sense to me because I had no problem whatsoever relating to this music due to the transcendent nature of the truth and humanity that’s at the core of a lot of it, something that was mentioned in this post. But they still exist(ed).

It bugs that some people are using trivial (and sometimes non-existent) aspects of who someone (supposedly?) is to gauge whether or not they can or “should” be into a certain kind of music. But then when I hear songs like this, it’s not surprising to me that they do. Disappointing and sad, but not surprising. And I wonder sometimes if these artists and songwriters think about the messages they’re sending – ALL of the messages – and what they telling the world when they write, record, and release these songs. I wonder if they even care. I wonder if it’s their intention to send the message that if you’re not “one of us” then you can just eff right off. Disturbing, to say the least.

It’s not just country music, either. I see this ridiculousness and ignorance at the forefront of a lot of genres I listen to. I can’t stand it! All I can say is thank goodness for the internet and music blogs because if all I had to discover music were cable TV and the radio…

having said that – the melody is first class dance floor material. what a waste.