Put A Record On: Six Country Songs That Changed My Life
What are yours?
My path to loving country music (again, we love a broad definition here since genre is mostly meaningless anyway! folk, americana, roots, honky-tonk??? love it all) has been far from a straight line.
I grew up in a staunchly post-grunge Seattle, where rock (and flannel) were still king and the prevailing musical attitude among child know-it-alls like myself was "I like everything but country and rap" (nevermind the zillion Ja Rule songs happily embedded into my subconscious from my middle school years). Craving independence from my mom's very good music taste (more on that later), I moved from Backstreet Boys/Radio Disney (late elementary school) to KISS 106.1 top 40 (middle school) to 107.7 The End "alternative rock" via Avril Lavigne and No Doubt. I wanted to be in a rock band, and so I was; then high school marked the beginning of my love affair with jazz and, soon after, hip-hop.
My tastes were increasingly broad, but certainly there was no forecasting that I'd wind up writing extensively about country music — unless you count the fact that I did dog 4-H for almost a decade, including showing at the county and state fairs every year…my only Real Country bona fides :) So, if you'll permit a little more navel-gazing, I'll share a few songs that I feel got me where I am now — the long way around.
Alison Krauss, "Oh, Atlanta": Really, it's the whole Now That I've Found You: A Collection — choosing one song feels nearly impossible, but I got to hear an all-woman band do a stellar rendition of this one my first time at Bobby's Idle Hour in Nashville so we'll go with it. My earliest musical memories are wearing out three of my mom's CDs, all of which I'd still call canon: Erykah Badu, Baduizm; Natalie Cole, Take A Look; and this one. I remember being five years old and trying to sing like Alison (lol), not sure how at moments she seemed to have two voices at once (an early lesson in harmonies). Of course at that point I had no idea what genre was, or anything besides that I loved the music so much. I still cry every time I listen because it's just that core (and that beautiful)!
