Rules Of The Game #25: Country Music WTF?

[koganbot]

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The Rules Of The Game #25: Country Music WTF?

I write a lot about Eric Church and a little about Miley and Taylor and Kix and Ronnie and Jason and Brad and John and Johns (I discuss her fingers).

What do you guys think of these performers? For those of you who foolishly believe that the Miley song being so disco-pop makes it not country (this was Chris Willman's opinion over on the rolling country thread), just listen to the melody when Miley sings "I can't wait to see you again" and notice the similarities to Jace Everett's "I wanna do bad things with you." Both melodies come from template number six in How To Write Rockabilly Songs.

Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Oh, in Connecticut, having access to a TV (but not to the Disney Channel), I saw my first episode of Hannah Montana last Saturday morning on ABC - thought the repartee was well-written, events well-paced, and lines well-timed. Miley was merely adequate as an actress - the script didn't call on her to convey complexity of emotion or anything in the way of subtext, but she delivered her lines clearly as if a human were speaking them rather than reading them, and she didn't bump into the furniture. (I'm assuming this was a rerun, maybe from the first season. Greg says Miley's gotten better as an actress over time.) The show was charming, but I was disappointed anyway, the reason being that it did nothing interesting with her dual role as Miley and Hannah. She could have been any teen, not one who was a superstar at night. Maybe other episodes delve into her dual identity more, but I was hoping the show would go beyond the idea that she's a rock star who conceals this offstage so that she can be a normal teen too. In Zorro or Batman or Superman or Sailor Moon there's tension between the identities, and a strong suggestion that the hero identity is the real one - Zorro isn't himself when he's out of his mask, otherwise the evil governor'd be onto him, but there's also the suggestion that the heroic role deprives him and all heroes of the opportunity to be truly normal, and there's a definite suggestion - at least among the guys - that the Clark Kents have to be the opposite of potent in their normal attire to get away with their heroism when in costume.

Anyway, in this episode of Hannah Montana, there was little, other than a few gags about Hannah's bodyguard coming back from a marine training program and being overzealous, using metal detectors and the like, that had anything to do with the Hannah role, which might as well not have existed.

What was interesting was the suggestion in the script that males, especially adult males, are goofy and lovable but not quite socially functional in comparison to girl teens. The plot was that on her birthday Miley's dad would always give her some goofy girly outfit that she didn't want and that would embarrass her in front of her friends, but she always felt obligated to wear it a few times so as not to hurt his feelings. At the end of the episode her dad confesses that he's simply having trouble admitting she's growing up, isn't a little girl anymore. (So this is kind of the opposite of the superhero having to hide her potency; here she's having to hide being infantilized.) The script gets around the problem of her having potentially to confront her dad; it has him observing her trying to evade embarrassment in front of her friends, with Miley actually standing up for the outfit and for her dad, preferring ridicule to betrayal. But dad, seeing this, sees that he's got to change.

And - something that wasn't highlighted at all, since the bodyguard was barely in play and the superstar Hannah identity even less so - but the protection the bodyguard provides against fan adulation or violence or whatever threat the fans pose is irrelevant to the threats in this script: hurting a dad's feelings and being exposed to the ridicule of one's peers.

By far the most alive thing in the episode was a brief bit under the closing credits where Miley, wearing the pink kitty-cat suit her dad had gotten her (it has a cat head that meows when you squeeze it), does a gleeful dance with her pal Oliver, who's got a dog outfit that barks, the two of them swinging side to side and throwing meows and barks at her dad and brother and best friend, who are appalled.

(Owing to technical difficulties the Las Vegas Weekly posted this column four days late, and owing to financial difficulties - theirs - I've been given a four-week furlough so Rules Of The Game will be down until January except it'll make a brief return mid-December or so.)

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I'm always very confused about what is country and what is rock. Particularly concerning Guns N Roses, who always seem about 80% or above country to me although are clearly canonised as rock.

Oh btw, my copy of your book arrived about a week and a half ago- have been enjoying it immensely, in illicit non-essay reading sessions.

[koganbot]

Thank you.

The confusion over what is country and what isn't (and there's a similar confusion with almost any genre I can think of) goes back to the beginning of recording, when what was country and what was blues and what was gospel was never clear, though the record companies tried to get performers to stick to one or the other. In any event, rock has been pouring into country at a steady clip. Usually some signifier such as banjo or fiddle or guitar picking or vocal twang is thrown in your face to let you know something's "country," but then again there are performers like Faith Hill and Shania Twain and LeAnn Rimes who I get the impression would rather throw away the signifiers if they could get away with it. As for Guns N' Roses, I would probably call them rock or blues or metal before I called them country, but that doesn't mean you're wrong to hear them as country. There's a shrieky virulence to Axl's singing that probably puts them outside country no matter what. But have you heard Shooter Jennings, a friend of Axl's with a sleaze-metal past who's now marketing himself as country (son of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter), yet is willing to sound like this?

And the influence of the Stones and Mellencamp and Springsteen is all over the latest Brooks & Dunn record.

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

This is an early episode of the series, but the general criticism that it is too Miley and not enough Hannah holds all throughout the series. The show does very little with the Hannah Montana identity except to the extent that it creates wacky misunderstanding. It does lightly explore the tension that the main popular girls in the school hate Miley but love Hannah. Some episodes are more Hannah-centric than others.

Miley's line readings get better as it progresses, and she gets more in character. The plots and repartee remain top notch, the acting remains simply OK and this is probably still the best show of its type on TV.

[koganbot]

The plots and repartee remain top notch, the acting remains simply OK

Change this to "the hooks and pacing are top notch, while the singing is simply OK" would be a good description of "GNO Girls Night Out," which would be in my top ten if Miley had given it anything. "The let's go, GNO" part is tremendous anyway, but I can't quite understand why she's so blah on the rest, which is still quite good, but...

On "See You Again" the vocals are totally there, deep-voiced, have her rawness and passion while bouncing goofily along (that rhythm that Mordy's talking about below).

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

Frank, I wonder if you noticed the rhythm that Miley naturally has (that you touched upon in her cat dance). She moves with a similar style to the way she sings - like she's got a natural goofy bounce in her step. (I think this shows up quintessentially in the episode where she gets poison ivy and does an itch-dance on stage at an interview.) Greg, how you noticed this? It's kinda jerky, goofy - almost like dancing the robot, but in real life.