<\/p>\n
Everyone knows there\u2019s something kind of funny about country music. The genre\u2019s cultural identity is linked to a stylized and unapologetically old-fashioned vision of America, which can seem rather hokey. In 1975, the legendary country singer and songwriter David Allan Coe released his version of \u201cYou Never Even Called Me by My Name,\u201d a sardonic tribute to the genre that he loved. After the second refrain, Coe added a spoken interlude in which he recounts a conversation with Steve Goodman, one of the songwriters. (The other was John Prine<\/a>, uncredited.) \u201cHe told me it was the perfect country-and-Western song,\u201d Coe says, about Goodman. \u201cI told him it was not<\/em> the perfect country-and-Western song, because he hadn\u2019t said anything at all about mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting drunk.\u201d Apparently, Goodman agreed, because the final verse efficiently makes up for these omissions:<\/p>\n Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison This was the kind of country satire that country fans could enjoy, and evidently they did, because it became Coe\u2019s first Top Ten country hit. Coe died last week, at the age of eighty-six, leaving behind a vast and varied discography. He is probably best known for his song \u201cTake This Job and Shove It,\u201d which was a No. 1 country hit for Johnny Paycheck. But Coe\u2019s handful of hits were balanced by political songs, provocations (his lyrics included both sexual and racial epithets), and more than a few punch lines. \u201cIf that ain\u2019t country, it\u2019s a damn good joke,\u201d he once sang, but his career was proof that a memorable song can easily be both.<\/p>\n Perhaps Coe would have enjoyed \u201cDry Spell,\u201d an absurd song by Kacey Musgraves, which is full of double entendres about unwanted abstinence. \u201cAin\u2019t nobody\u2019s tool up in my shed \/ Ain\u2019t nobody\u2019s boots under my bed,\u201d she sings, as if she is hoping but not expecting that things will change. (In an old Coe song called \u201cCoffee,\u201d he brags, \u201cI\u2019m the only male in her box.\u201d) \u201cDry Spell\u201d comes near the beginning of \u201cMiddle of Nowhere,\u201d Musgraves\u2019s new album, which is doubly conceptual, cleverly evoking two classic country themes at the same time. The album is full of songs about Musgraves\u2019s state of birth, which is Texas, and her state of mind, which seems to be lonely. \u201cDon\u2019t tell me you miss me, I don\u2019t care \/ I\u2019m somewhere in the middle of nowhere,\u201d she sighs, as if she\u2019s decided that it\u2019s not the worst place to be. And \u201cUncertain, TX,\u201d a duet with Coe\u2019s old friend and sometime collaborator Willie Nelson<\/a>, depicts an imaginary small town full of romantic disappointment, as personified by \u201ccowboys that just can\u2019t get off the fence.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newyorker.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everyone knows there\u2019s something kind of funny about country music. The genre\u2019s cultural identity is linked to a stylized and unapologetically old-fashioned vision of America, which can seem rather hokey. In 1975, the legendary country singer and songwriter David Allan Coe released his version of \u201cYou Never Even Called Me by My Name,\u201d a sardonic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2409878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[346860,22846,471287,307225],"class_list":["post-2409877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-album-review","tag-country-music","tag-country-musicians","tag-popular-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Music-Review-Kacey-Musgravess-Middle-of-Nowhere.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2409877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409879,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409877\/revisions\/2409879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2409878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got run over by a damned old train<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n