Drinkin' and Cheating?

Salon.com had a story about how Faith Hill and country music in general seem to be moving back to all things redneck. Crossover to pop music is out, and embracing your inner redneck is in. There's something there. But more important is a trend away from the drinkin' and cheatin' and heartache that country music used to be about. Today's country is family friendly.

More and more, country is becoming the soundtrack for the pickup-driving office worker who has a fat wife at home, three (or more) kids, and who attends evangelical protestant church services weekly. He lives on a half acre spread outside of town and calls it "the ranch."

Musicians such as pot-smoking Willie Nelson are tolerated -- honored to a degree -- but are no longer the mainstream of country music. The last time I saw Willie Nelson, he was singing with Jessica Simpson.

The first time I took note of the new family friendly country music trend was Lonestar's "My Front Porch Looking In." Hearing about a "carrot top" (his redhead kid) with a "sippy cup" made me stop in my tracks. Maybe the sippy cup at least has beer in it.

Even songs that may seem to be about drinking have been tamed down. Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett's "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" comes to mind as an example. Would Johnny Cash have even felt the need to justify drinking before five o'clock? I think of Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down," which was also performed by Johnny Cash: "The beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad / so I had one more for dessert." In the new country world, drinking is something you do on vaction (i.e. "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" and Toby Keith's "Stays in Mexico"). These days, you are at church Sunday morning, not coming down.

At first, I thought that Toby Keith and Willie Nelson's "Beer for My Horses" was a sign of hope. But even that song reflects Toby Kieth's typical braindead nuke them all worldview. And it is a song about how things used to be. Toby probably does not even own horses, much less give them beer.

I could go on and on. The only source of hope (and this is digging deep) is how Brett Michaels (formerly the girly lead singer of the hair metal band Poison) was one of the judges on the latest season of Nashville Star. Country music needs somebody who has slept with Pamela Anderson.