Welcome to TERRIBLE! Week, Day 5. Lets have us a little talk about pop country, Rascal Flatts, and their abominable song Skin. Ill dispense with the usual awfulness: the awkward rhymes, the uninspired music (now with extra fiddle!), and the lead singers Im so country its killing me voice. What really gets me is how pettily it treats its subject matter. To whit, girl diagnosed with leukemia, girl feels bad about losing her hair to chemo, boyfriend shows up to take her to prom with his own head shaved. Daw Uplifting. The thing is, I know where they were trying to go with this. A horrible situation that nothing can make better, but there are still some bright spots. And that is absolutely as far as it goes. Prom. Theres not a complete story here, there cant be. Because this is pop country, and that would be unsettling, maybe even dangerous thinking, and that just cannot happen in the whitewashed world of Rascal Flatts pop country universe. Full disclosure: I already hated Rascal Flatts. Theyve made a career of taking everything about pop country and cranking it way past eleven. I hate the lead singers ubiquitous country hiccup. I hate their good ol boy-meets-bro culture look. I hate their self-aware smirk as they plod through yet another story of how mom cut your hair and baked apple pies while dad dispensed wisdom of the ages when you went fishing on a tire swing on the backyard. Theyre not just following the formula, theyve concentrated it and are laughing all the way to the bank while their audience mainlines it, because they know that theyre playing them like the fiddles they slather all over every track. And theres my biggest problem with pop country, as embodied by the Nazgul of the music industry, Rascal Flatts. I love unabashed, uplifting songs, I really do, but not at the sake of blind, stupid ignorance. Yeah, theres a good chance this girl could die, and she is certainly going to have to go through months of painful debilitating medical treatments, but hey, her boyfriend made a cute gesture that one time and gave the girl a little something to smile about. Its a cute story that people can pass around like internet forwards, because its not personal, it happened to someone else, and the unforeseen implications of the whole situation dont happen in this world. Shes got a life-ravaging disease, but she got to go to prom, yay. I keep listening to pop country because there are some good artists out there. I can even stomach some Toby Keith every once in a while, because I know hes in on the joke, and that, somehow, makes it better. But way more often than not, its all condiment, no sandwich. Or, as Magic developer Mark Rosewater would say, hash browns that are all crust. Candy without end, empty calories that eventually make your brain fat and slobby, until that old-timey things was better in the simple days nostalgia filter starts to become reality. And nobody does it better than Rascal Flatts. There are lots of songs that deal with confronting death, without even dipping into goth or metal. Suzanne Vegas 50-50 Chance is vague and beautiful. eels The Medication Is Wearing Off is at once clinical and confessional, and so utterly heartbreaking I get chills even thinking about it. Death Cab for Cuties What Sarah Said, however, just takes the cake. Where in Skin we see a boyfriends one-time gesture, Death Cab presents us with the horror of the waiting room, the reality of death occurring right now, and the question, So whos going to watch you die? Rascal Flatts cant deal with a question like that, let alone the answer, because they trade in sentiment, not emotion. And although Death Cabs song is, quite literally, morbid, its also inspiring, and uplifting. The soul departs the body by the end of the song, leaving behind pain and memory and scars of love and so much time spent together, and the sorrow of time never to be had. The body, shaved head or no, is just the crust.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:37:43 +0000
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