Country music update

I spent the weekend with my family, which gave me a chance to listen to something other than the indie/emo/folk/anti-folk crapola on my iPod. Which is always kind of interesting; it’s like simultaneously being transported back to my delicately sheltered girlhood (where the musical stylings of Reba McIntyre and John Michael Montgomery had me singing along happily) and being bashed repeatedly over the head with the embarrassing lameness of nu-country or whatever the hell you call that country pop crap churned out by bands that look like the Goo Goo Dolls and sound like the Goo Goo Dolls’ even lamer redneck cousins.

Because that kind of country was just not around when I was a country music fan, and I’m wondering who to blame.

Anway, it’s time for some bullets.

• All this time I thought that “Lips of an Angel” song by that bottom-feeding power-ballad band Hinder was the worst song of the past five years (in other words, they’re the new Creed), and then I heard that song covered by this jackass and I decided that, while the country version is slightly less annoying than the Hinder version, I will still hate it more because WTF WAS THAT DUDE THINKING, COVERING SUCH AN AWFUL SONG.

• Garth Brooks has a song about statutory rape! I don’t remember being so scandalized when I sang along to this as a naive 10-year-old.

• “Have You Forgotten” is possibly the most unintentionally hilarious song of all time. From the nanosecond I heard it all those years ago, I snickered rudely at its ridiculous premise and strained rhymes (“forgotten” and “bin Laden”) but I had no idea that stations still played it without a touch of irony. But they do. And it is even funnier (not in a “ha ha” way, but in a “dear god, it’s worse than I thought” way) now in 2007, when things are so unbelievably FUBAR. It should be noted that I take particular delight in being a jerk about Darryl Worley because he’s from the same place I’m from. And clearly HE’S the loser, NOT ME! NOT MEEE!