Surely the end is near. I just read that last night’s Country Music Association awards broadcast closed with Dolly Parton and Elton John singing "Imagine."
Granted, the CMA is just a trade association pushing "product," but still–if the CMA no longer sees any difference between country music and a soft-core totalitarian daydream, and if its audience doesn’t care, the American fiber is farther gone in decay than I thought. Somebody please tell me this song was booed.
–Maclin Horton
Dolly, how could you?
I guess it doesn’t surprise me, though; Country music is full of the emotional remnants of Christianity, and not much substance. Might as well sing “Imagine”…
Now that I’ve collected myself a bit I’ll add that the mere presence of Elton John in that context is pretty horrible in itself.
“Sir Elton John.” “Sir Mick Jagger.” Tells you a lot about the current state of England.
Well, the royal family is, after all, a bunch of German decadents…
Elton John did, if you’ve forgotten, start out doing sort of countryish music. Remember “Tumbleweed Connection”?
He seems to have taken too many wrong turns on the Yellow Brick Road.
By some accounts, John Lennon was approaching Christianity toward the end of his life.
I read one tale, however unlikely it seems, that he watched televangelists…
Haven’t heard Tumbleweed Connection since a few months after it came out, so could be wrong, but I don’t remember it sounding countryish at all, although the songs seemed to have a sort of out-West cowboy-movie kind of theme (apropos the title).
Poor Lennon–he seems to have been one of those people who are just all over the place. I saw a clip of him somewhere pointing out where he had seen a flying saucer. The apparent domestic contentment of his last few years was kind of touching.
I missed the show so, no, I can’t imagine, but it sure is cracking me up trying. I do have to give credit to some marketing firm for going after the oft-ignored 45-50 country western transvestite former hippies.
That has to be one of the quirkiest combos since David Bowie and Bing Crosby gave us The Little Drummer Boy.
I should mention I always hate hearing great music killed by the likes of “Sir” Elton John. Besides his obviously objectionable personal life, I’ve never cared much for him musically either.
I just can’t help being more amused about the image of people sitting in a room discussing all the thousands of combinations of music and artists, and they come up with that one. I think they’re the same people running my company. Just a hunch.
Speaking of Bing Crosby, you simply have to hear his version of Hey, Jude.