The Wilkinsons-LA
Its about a girl whose boy has gone to Los Angeles,
with Prada stores and electric cars, and about the
worries that correspond to that move–namely “I don’t want to
lose you to LA.
But the thing is is not really about LA. Its about
not wanting to lost country values–of love, fiedilty,
patrotism,and vehicles that run on gasoline. She does not
want to lose the All American foot ball hero to a sissified
eunuch who cares more about hair products then anything else.
Maybe its something else to, maybe its something more meta. Think
of it as losing country music to LA, from the roughhewn Nashville
to the slick and over produced sheen of studio productions.
There has been a move of these songs about Nashville selling out, and they have
moved from the outside in. It started with the outlaw alt insurgents, Robbie Fulks
singing Fuck This Town, Hank III singing Dick in Dixie and Cunt in Country,
then slowly inward, the worn out George Strait remaking his career with Murder on
Music Row, and then in Canada at least Chris Cummings They’re Making Singers
out of Cowboy Hats—Fulks and Hank had banjos, mandolins, it was honly tonk
at its most pure, George Strait still had steel guitars. Chris Cummings
dropped most of the musical signifers, but wasn’t nearly as plastic
as Shania Twains Def Lepperd Light.
What’s interesting is this song is the most pop, the most jangly, the least country
musically i have heard. Its a family band, and that doesn’t really happen
anywhere else anymore and it cares about the issues of persevation, so
the code is country and the theme is country…which means the desire to return to
a non fallen state has become so ubqituoius that the words don’t need to
be said.