A country reflection

This will probably kill off any of my remaining cool points but this weekend I discovered the musical stylings of one Taylor Swift and even though ever indie bone in my body is screaming is pain at my affinity for a mainstream artist she is actually very good.

Though her grasp on literature is a bit fuzzy, as seen in Love Story (neither Romeo and Juliet nor The Scarlet letter ended very well) her music shows a maturity that is beyond her teeny-bopper image.

Now this got me thinking about the stereotypes of country music. The first is that it centers around a few central story lines and subjects. (My wife left me, Booze, dogs, hometowns, cowboys or some combination thereof) While it is undeniable that "My wife left me for some cowboy and blew our hometown with my dog because I drink too much" would make a great country song and probably already has. There is more to it than that.

Country remains popular today because it reminds people of their roots. It makes them remember when a man's pride was rooted in his land alongside his crops or a man's honor was something to fight over. Things like this were mostly lost when the population moved from farms to the cities. Music can still remind us that what was left wasn't lost.