Let's Make Some Good Ole Days

While I was watching a Budweiser ad on NBC during the Olympics (I am an Olympic junkie) I was reminded of something I realized when I was last in Ohio. It was a realization I came to while driving down the turnpike listening to one of my mom's country CDs (probably Phil Vassar, I like him!). I was thinking about the cornfields I was driving past and what the songs were about and what that says about the people that listen to the music. The songs are all about lost loves, getting drunk, getting divorced, keeping old friends, and getting your new car dirty. Why shouldn't life be so simple? So many of the other music I listen to is about anger. Anger at women, anger at men, anger at a city, anger at life. And there's really nothing wrong with that. I still like those songs. But I find it really interesting that even a mediocre country song will tell a better story than a great rock song, and that story will be about a life that is significantly simpler. Does this mean that the people who listen to country are simpler? Not necessarily. Does it mean that they are shunning the real world to embrace some rural bardic ideal that doesn't exist any more? No. But I think it does show something interesting that certainly seems to ring true to me: Life is complicated enough, even if all we worry about is an everyday job, a wife, a kid, a car, and maybe a dog. And if that's true, then how necessary can the complications of urban life really be? So what then motivates those of us who do embrace those complications?