Music Break – Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country”

September 19, 2012 Jaye Ryan Uncategorized 50

C & W music singer Alan Jackson recorded an interesting song “Gone Country” in the 90s with a theme that should interest OD readers:

Alan Jackson Invites Whites - Gone Country

Lonely, alienated Whites are looking to relocate – go somewhere else where the music, the people are just… well, nicer, friendlier… (whiter). Alan Jackson sings of lonely White American singers struggling and just not making it in places like Vegas, LA, the Village in New York City – these places are hostile, alien. Maybe Nashville Tennessee, the center of the White American country music world will be the place to go. Like the theme from the classic Andy Griffith Show “the Stranger” White refugees from all over our unhappy, BRA American nation can go South, “Gone Country” and the locals in Nashville Tennessee and throughout the South will accept us – as one of them….

Well, maybe not. But, it’s a nice song:

50 Comments

  1. I would like to believe your misinterpretations are willful, Ryan, but I’m afraid you’re just thick. Johnson’s poking fun at the cynicism of singers looking to cash in on watered down deracinated ‘new’ country music that is more pop and rock than the real stuff. See also “Murderer on Music Row”:

  2. JimP, I believe you’re wrong about “Gone Country” having the same tone as “Murder on Music Row”.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_Country_%28song%29

    Alan Jackson said about the song: “Bob McDill wrote this and he is one of my favorite writers of all time. When I first heard this song I fell in love with it. I wish that I’d written it cause it says a lot of things that I’d like to say. I think it’s just a fun song actually, celebrating how country music has become more widespread and accepted by all types of people all over the country.”

  4. 313Chris,

    if you are monitoring this site still, I just heard Romney is pulling his campaign out of Michigan. Well done Chris, you wasted enough of your time on here to contribute to that retreat. You’ve also been wasting our time on here with your sniping and trolling.

  6. The sad news is that all of those newcomers to country music tweaked it around into a country/pop hybrid so that it would be more pleasing to the non-country fans. You have to look pretty hard to find a country station that plays very much music that traditional fans recognize as country music.

    Every style of music evolves. Always has and always will. However, what has happened to a lot of the music that is passed off as country music is bastardization, not evolution.

    You can still find a lot of new, original country music in clubs and roadhouses, but it appears to be getting pretty scarce on the big stage. I think that the last singer that grabbed my ear on a mainstream country station was Jamey Johnson. I had heard his older songs on a couple of small stations out of Ft. Worth and on some satellite stations, but I was surprised to hear him on the mud peddling stations.

    Jack, I don’t think that where you’re from matters much to country folks. It’s how you think that counts. When I was still living full time in Edmonton, KY, I knew a guy from Chicago who fit right in with the local folks. He wheeled-and-dealed for goats, rabbits, chickens and antique tools down at the Second Saturday swap meet at the fair grounds. He liked the locals and they liked him.

    I knew another guy from Chicago who lived in nearby Columbia. He was just like oil on water. He spent most of his time bending folks’ ears down at a local hangout about how great everything was in the Windy City. He would always look hurt whenever somebody asked him when he was heading back home.

    It isn’t where you’re from that counts: It’s what you are.

  7. @John

    Is that right? And I just read that both Rasmussen AND Gallop have Romney ahead of Obama in all the swing states, which happens to include Michigan.

    What the hell is it to you anyway? Do you want Obama to win? Do you even vote in American elections?

  9. “The sad news is that all of those newcomers to country music tweaked it around into a country/pop hybrid so that it would be more pleasing to the non-country fans.”

    It wasn’t the “newcomers” that tweaked country music more towards pop. It was the Nashville establishment (Ralph Emery, Eddy Arnold, Ray Price, etc…) that did so starting in the 1960’s by adding string orchestras, and backup choruses to invent the schmaltzy middle of the road “Nashville Sound” in order to sell more records up North. Nashville has always been more about making money than making art. The “twangy” sound doesn’t sell as they say in the music biz.

  10. So link your source then. Everything I can find has Romney vowing NOT to abandon Michigan as McCain did last time. You’re full of shit.

  11. “I hear down there it’s changed you see
    They’re not as backward as they used to be…
    Everybody’s gone country…
    The whole world’s gone country”

    What IS this “Country” that’s “Changed” — “that’s not backward like they used to be” –that’s sophisticated, “cool,” cosmopolitan, and wealthy — that’s “for EVERYONE” and is gone GLOBAL?

    It’s not my country.

  12. Rudel, you’re right about the “Nashville establishment.” I despise their fake, money-raking “sound” as much as I love the real rural folk music of my people.

  13. “White refugees from all over our unhappy, BRA American nation can go South.”

    So let that kind all flee to Tennessee right now, while our genuine rural white people remain in place and continue to occupy our own good fertile home lands.

  15. “Rudel, you’re right about the “Nashville establishment.” I despise their fake, money-raking “sound” as much as I love the real rural folk music of my people.”

    It all goes back to traditional Irish, English, and Scottish jigs, reels, hornpipes, and ballads.

  17. It’s true that the very concept of ‘country’ is a concocted ‘genre,’ and I accept what Rudel says, but even with the understanding that jew and goy alike are after money in music there are still quality and scope distinctions that can be made. It cannot be denied that country has gotten increasingly PC. Everything is up-with-women, and to the extent sorrow and pain area allowed to enter the song at all these days, it’s that thing with balls that’s causing them.

    For this: I think it’s just a fun song actually, celebrating how country music has become more widespread and accepted by all types of people all over the country.”

    If you think Jackson honestly believes that, you’re nuts. If I’m not wrong, it’s a nearly perfectly ironical statement. It represents his doing precisely what the song he’s misreprenting in this statement pokes fun at or humorously laments. The song is not abou what Jackson says, it’s about people you know damn well would be popping redneck jokes moving into country because that’s where the money happens to be at the moment. Jackson’s not doing a redneck shtick like Foxworthy. He knows darn well what the song is getting at, it’s making a dig, in an oblique, relaxed Southern way.

  18. The lyrics of the song directly contradict Jackson’s public statement. Not one of the types mentioned comes to country because he or she _likes_ that style of music, which is Jackson’s false assertion, they go to it — every single one — because their field is dead. Jackson’s just making nice because his fans are mostly simpletons who are uncomfortable with anything mean or pointed (and threatened by anything ironic), which is if not a Southern cultural flaw, one of the main reasons the region is continually defeated by the north (or Jews, as you like) on every front.

  20. “people you know damn well would be popping redneck jokes”

    What happens when you play a country song backwards?……….you get your dog back, you get your wife back, you get your truck back, you get your house back…

  21. Here’s the nasty reality with white men in Michigan.

    “One key to President Obama’s strength may be the 51%-46% advantage he currently has among Michigan men,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “It has been suggested that the auto bailout is particularly popular among men in ‘car cultures’ like Michigan even if they do not directly make their living from the auto industry.”

    these are your people 313Chris. Good proud Patriotard Murkins.

  22. Rudel,

    so backward country is more like Vonnegut’s bombing scene? You get you Fresdan back and the bomb components are safely buried in deep mineshafts? It’s a thought. Like Roots Playing Backwards?

  24. Unfortunately, the people who come to the South want to transform Virginia and North Carolina into New York and New Jersey like they have already transformed Oregon and Colorado into California.

  26. Rudel: I believe we could add Chet Atkins name to the top of your list. He and the others you mentioned either signed the crossovers or created them from the talent that was already in their stable.

    I don’t like the old tears in the beer country music, but I have an even harder time listening to “country” performers who play songs that would have been classified as Bubble Gum Music when I was a teenager. One good example would be Taylor Swift. Cute girl, but the first time I heard one of her songs I thought it was Avril Lavigne trying to make a comeback.

  28. “like they have already transformed Oregon and Colorado into California.”

    Not completely at least as of yet. Ashland which is right across the border is totally colonized. They even have a local sales tax on restaurant food! The City of Portland is more of a mixed bag. Suburban Washington County has lots of Californians mainly due to Intel and other high tech firms locating both R&D and chip fabrication plants there.

    It really drove up house prices for a while but that has really tapered off since the real estate crash.

    A lot of Oregonians and Seattleites moved down to California for work in the early 70’s when defense related jobs started to dry up due to the winding down of the war, so in some sense it is chickens coming home to roost. I for one ain’t goin’ nowhere. Oregon is the most beautiful state in the entire country.

  29. “I don’t like the old tears in the beer country music, but I have an even harder time listening to “country” performers who play songs that would have been classified as Bubble Gum Music when I was a teenager. One good example would be Taylor Swift. Cute girl, but the first time I heard one of her songs I thought it was Avril Lavigne trying to make a comeback.”

    I couldn’t agree with you more. We had one of the AM stations here switch to “classic country” a while back as an antidote to the bland, limited playlist, pop/rock that is on the two country stations we have here in town but it didn’t last for more than a couple of years. Texas still has better country music on the radio though. At least it did the last time I was there in Abilene and Coleman a few years back.

  30. @John

    Why don’t you just haul your punk Limey rear-end up here and see for yourself how “popular” Obama is among white people?

    You sit here making taunts, and citing CNN articles of all things?? CNN, which even John Stewart or Bill Maher would hardly take without a huge grain of salt… And this in some frail attempt to demoralize me? Try harder than that, sweety. I lived through the Devil’s Nights of 80’s. And as if you could even know my own state better than someone who was born and lived here their entire life. Don’t make me laugh.

    You’ve been in this country all of five minutes, and you’re ready to tell the natives how their own compatriots, their own neighbors, their own families are going to vote? And on top of it all, you exhibit zero regard for the genuine patriotism of actual Americans who are fighting, however they can, to preserve the only homeland they have. You’re an arrogant fucking jerk. Go home.

  31. Listen, I know mittens is a terrible candidate. He’s lame, unlikable, and a panty-waist flip-flopper. It’s really a testament to how hated Obama is that it’s still this close. And since it’s only whites supporting romeny, that means the vast majority of white people will vote for just about anyone over the HNIC. That’s progress.

    Glass half full rant for the day.

  32. He’s not a bad candidate. The Demographic reality that whites have lost supremacy is already here. It’s not a hypothetical anymore. Romney can’t do anything. It’s actually painful to see him getting roasted by the press and the new establishment. Auto da Fe
    awaits white candidates from now on.

    Admittedly this is CNN but it’s emphatic. White guys won’t vote for a white guy from another economic class background. Coloureds won’t vote for a white guy. Do the math. It’s probably the end of mainstream conservatism. Soon to be split into a populist faction (like the BNP) and the rest into a neoconservative Jewish lead rump.

  33. He’s a bad candidate. A populist white guy would be cleaning up. He should be railing against China etc. Rich whites would still vote for him because they fear Obama more.

    Romeny’s all wrong for this election.

    I’m still voting for him though.

  34. I request that OD regulars and new readers make their comments address the topic of this post:

    “Music Break – Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country”

    Our people have a problem of not being able to stay focused at the topic/problems at hand, instead they go off on hobby horses, obsessions from the past or regional differences, church affiliation differences with other White Indo European Americans.

  36. “they go off on hobby horses, obsessions from the past or regional differences, church affiliation differences with other White Indo European Americans”:

    Those “hobby horses” are often the key to successful communication — to understanding one another — and the “hobby horse” of religion, in particular, is ultimately foundational and always relevant to ANY topic of discussion.

  37. Mosin Nagant says:
    September 19, 2012 at 11:56 pm (Edit)
    “they go off on hobby horses, obsessions from the past or regional differences, church affiliation differences with other White Indo European Americans”:

    Those “hobby horses” are often the key to successful communication — to understanding one another — and the “hobby horse” of religion, in particular, is ultimately foundational and always relevant to ANY topic of discussion.

    Jack Ryan responds:

    OK, but the topic of this post is something light – a popular C &W song from the 90s – Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country”. Comments should address the main subject of the post. It’s like a film reviewer that doesn’t write about the film he’s reviewing, instead he goes off on subjects that are just floating around his head.

  38. The derailment of this thread had nothing to do with hobby-horses. It was started by British John trying to taunt me with some misinformation about Romney’s campaign in Michigan.

  39. Alan Jackson cannot be lumped in with what passes for country music these days. The suits in Nashville always idiotically try to “broaden the appeal” of country, but somehow the real music gets through anyway. Just think of Buck Owens, Willie, Waylon, and all the other “outlaw” types, each with his unique style. Not to mention Graham Parsons, bluegrass, and other offshoots.

    In spite of the mediocre pop “country” music complete with fake accents that gets all the radio airplay, we are still spoiled for choice. Great country music, like all forms of great music, transcends the fashions of the times.

    If Alan Jackson ain’t the real deal, nobody is.

    See what I mean…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um46f4on8fo
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szsqP9RmiVs&feature=fvsr
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBh-m1yTZS0

    Deo Vindice

  40. 313Chris – I also noticed those comments that the Romney campaign was giving up on Michigan. What utter nonsense.

    If it was up to me I would just delete these ad hominem attacks against you, me your state, your White ethnic group, Whites from different churches. But, I have been asked to not delete comments.

    So, I am just suggesting that OD readers get more focused and comment on the topic of the post.

  45. Romney is starting to assume the obligatory “deer caught in the headlights” posture of Republicrat “opponents” to BRA. Yes, let’s vote…

    Who is the more “beautiful loser?” Johnny “Maverick War Hero” Mac or “Businessman and CEO Extraordinaire” Mittens?

    The GOP is a spent force at the national level. Bye, bye Amurrica.

    Deo Vindice

  46. @JimP

    Jackson certainly wasn’t afraid to acknowledge the obvious message of “Murder on Music Row”, so I don’t see how it makes sense that he wouldn’t tell the truth about the message in “Gone Country” because “his fans are mostly simpletons who are uncomfortable with anything mean or pointed.”

  47. Romney must go country. By that I don’t mean faking an accent or wearing boots. He’s simply got to say what the working class white wants to hear.

    Of course if he does this he will have mean things said about him. Which might hurt his feelings.

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