Gratuitous Country Musick Posting

This post by Dave Shearon on the positive psychology of country music caught my eye because he uses Rodney Atkins' smash hit "If [not When] You're Going Through Hell" as his example.

I actually dislike this song. And this being my blog, I'll tell you why.

You see, the problem is with the chorus. Here it is the first time through:

If you're going through hell
Keep on going, Don't slow down
If you're scared, don't show it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there

This is, in and of itself, pretty good. But here's the second chorus that follows the intervening verse:

Yeah, If you're going through hell
Keep on moving, Face that fire
Walk right through it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there

In my humble opinion, changing the middle part but coming back to exactly the same closing line weakens it considerably. And it gets worse, because immediately after this second chorus, Atkins goes back to repeat the first:

If you're going through hell
Keep on going, Don't slow down
If you're scared, don't show it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there

All this says to me is that some song writer either thought "You might get out/ before the devil even knows you're there" was exceptionally clever and should be exploited to the maximum, or else that this writer wasn't talented enough to come up with an alternate quality closing for the second verse.

In either case, the resultant overkill detracts considerably from what would be an otherwise pretty good song. It would have been far stronger either to stick to a single, uniform chorus throughout or else to have employed a completely different second chorus.

(Yes, critiquing country music has become a drive-time hobby of mine. And I may say that I don't know how one goes about becoming a Nashville music editor, but I think I'd be pretty good at it.)

Yips! to the Puppy-Blender.

UPDATE: Heh. Somebody googled in just now to this post from earlier this year on Joe Diffie's "Pick-Up Man." Now that's a good, country song.