Country Music Video Roundup #1 with Tris and Charles

Well, How-dee! I don't know what Saturday morning means in your house, but in the Aaron home, it means 2 solid hours of country music videos, watched from bed, with accompanying moans, griping, and, we admit it, the occasional goosebumps when gran'paw dies or what have you. Both CMT and GAC have their Top 20 Video Countdowns on Saturday morning, and between the two, there's a WHOLE lot to see. Here's our roundup so YOU don't have to watch.

1. First video up was "Boondocks" by a band called Little Big Town. This was the perfect introduction to the hee haw jugtown nightmare that is fake-authentic country music. One shot in the video is literally of a tousle-haired, sundress-wearing vixen, shot from *under a hog's belly.* This video has it all: clotheslines, pickup trucks, hay, you know, so "country" you wonder if the singer is really Australian.

2. "Believe" by Brooks and Dunn. Now, we freely admit that when "Believe" started, someone groaned. "I just can't do B & D right now," Tris said. We mean, the Red Dirt Road album, that horrible "You Can't Take The Honky Tonk Out Of The Girl" song - let's face it, there are some blights on B & D's record. Although we do love it when our favorite clown-show country music critic, Robert K. Oermann, calls for his smelling salts and swoons over how Ronnie Dunn has a "perfect tenor voice"; and we are always amused at the impotent flailing of Kix Brooks, who was originally shipped in to shake it because Ronnie's such a stiff. But, the "Believe" video gradually induced a rapt silence in the new Queen-sized. We were hooked in by the tale of friendship between our singer as a boy and the old black man down the street. The old man's life had been hard (war, dead wife, etc.), but his faith never wavered. The chorus mentions "lines written in red" and Charles (raised Baptist) had to fill in Tris (raised nothing) on what that means. "Christ's blood?" she guessed. "Well, sorta, but it's probably that all the Lord's words in the Bible are literally printed in red." A nice touch in the songwriting. The rhyme with "hearse" at the end was a little clunky, but hey, the old man's in heaven, so it's all peace in the valley. Basically, we LOVED this song.

3. "Kerosene" by Miranda Lambert. First off, we may be prejudiced because we were Buddy Jewell fans on Nashville Star, the same reality show which spawned Ms. Lambert. He was the hulking, hat-wearing, ex-high school quarterback and frat boy who grew up in a country music family, strayed, and then finally rediscovered the magic via Don Williams and Alabama, broke up with his first wife, hacked it up at Six Flags Over Texas, and sang more than 4,000 demos for established country stars, never catching a break while his second wife supported them with her nail-salon job. We loved his original song, "Help Pour Out the Rain," about appreciating your kids and telling them that, yeah honey, you will see grandpa in heaven. Good shit. Meanwhile, Miranda Lambert was the usual cute, perky young lass (see Carrie Underwood) who you've seen a million times before and will see a million times again. The camera loves her. She's got a great smile and a decent voice. Whatever, natural selection rules. So it's no surprise that Miranda's had a bigger career than Buddy, mostly because of "Kerosene," which came out last year, and was a favorite of horny pseudo-populist rock critics (the same people who thought "Redneck Woman" was a feminist classic). Miranda has awesome hair and makeup in the video, gives the boys what-for, and sexily sets stuff on fire (with kerosene!). It's one of those songs where a perfect-looking person who has had every break in the world sings about how life has screwed her over, but she's gonna make it after all. Sure Miranda, you would know. Anyway, who really cares, except for the tiny fact that "Kerosene" is a shameless, ham-fisted, note-for-note rip-off of "I Feel Alright," the title track from Steve Earle's incredible "Be careful what you wish for friends / I've been to hell and now I'm back again" 1996 junkie/crackhead redemption album that was generally unacknowledged or condescended to by those same rock critics (who had already written Earle off years ago because he never became the next Springsteen), and if they listened to country at all, preferred to ironically embrace the Garth legacy of headset arena-rock vaudeville. Well, Lambert took "I Feel Alright," changed the lyrics to a bunch of inane go-girl cliches (or just flat out repeated phrases like "smokin' gun"), whipped her hair around, mimicked all of Earle's vocals right down to the "heh" that comes in the middle of the verse, some producer gave it that digital guitar and drums boom, and then, to top if off, she lists herself as the sole songwriter! But, "Hey, it's just pop music, it's a good song no matter who wrote it, so lighten up," right? Well, no, actually, we won't.

4. "Jesus, Take the Wheel" by Carrie Underwood. This is the American Idol's first video and she looks rapturous, like some kind of glowing CGI princess lolling around in a carefree born-again Guideposts bliss state. Which is appropriate, because that's who Carrie is, after all. She's our little angel in size 0 jeans, and if we didn't need that as a nation right now, then face it, she wouldn't exist. Some of us may complain and some of us may feel a little alienated -- as EC once sang, "You're never the bridegroom / She's always the bride" -- but really, shouldn't we just appreciate what Carrie has to offer? And what she has to offer is bracingly powerful -- a pitch-perfect, cinemascope-sized voice dramatizing an undeniably positive message: JESUS HAS YOUR BACK. Essentially, he'll bail you out no matter what -- when you're laid off by Ford and have to take a job in the sporting goods department at Wal-Mart, when your employer steals the pension that you've been paying into for 30 years so now you have to keep working for ten more years despite the fact that your broken hip still hasn't really healed, or when you have to desperately transfer a $15,000 balance from one credit card to another to get a 5% better interest rate because the finance charges, if left unchecked, will send you to a collection agency and ruin your credit report for at least seven years and realistically that means that you'll proabably have to sell your house and move into a trailer. Carrie has no idea what any of that feels like, but if she did, she wouldn't be able to make it seem so easy to give over your entire life to JC, even though it kind of feels like a crazy, illogical thing to do. Here, Carrie sings about a lady who was driving, with her daughter in the backseat, hit some black ice, and was seconds away from crashing her car, when she realized that she should just hand over the keys to Dr. J. See, when you put it that way, it doesn't seem crazy or illogical at all. On the down side, the song repeats the same scenario three times, like Carrie forgot her notes back at the Hyatt Regency, and didn't know how to improvise. For us, the lack of variety was a problem. It's not a deal-breaker, but when you're making these afterlife or death decisions, it helps to be able to relate on as many levels as possible. How about a scene, for instance, where a divorced husband, drunk on White Russians, is driving home from, say, Blake's Bar and Grill, after missing his son's Little League game again, and his car hits some black ice and goes into a spin, while an 18-wheeler roars toward him. Then he realizes.....etc. Now that would've really driven the point home, but we're just nitpicking. Mostly, this song/video kicks Satan's ass.

5."Living In Fast Forward" by Kenny Chesney. Take 8 parts Jimmy Buffet, 2 parts Troy Aikman-style closeted quarterback, put him on a yacht in a coral choker and sleeveless tee shirt, griping about how hectic and meaningless life is as an arena-selling-out "hillbilly rock star." Are you throwing up yet? We did. This song will make you miss Montgomery Gentry. For real, mang.

6. "Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley and Allison Krauss. Nobody in contemporary country pulls off a duet quite like Brad Paisley. While it would be wrong to compare this clean-cut pretty boy to Mr. George Jones, our favorite vodka-swilling-riding-lawn-mower-driving-cos-wifey-took-my-damn-car-keys legend, Brad has Geo's sense of aching maleness that provides a perfect counterpart to a sweet soprano like severly overexposed and most definitely NOT a lesbian, Allison Krauss. This song is very confusing, even with the literally interpretive video. This man and lady are in love, then they part, then both drink themselves to death, and THEN, after the preacher in the gentleman caller string tie buries them beneath white crosses with their names handwritten on them (hun?), they are reunited in the afterlife and it feels so good. The two-part weirdo message appears to be (1) drinking to allieviate pain works; and (2) don't worry if you die, it's really the best thing that can happen to you. While we can't argue with either point, uh, they don't seem very, uh, Christian and stuff. At least strictly speaking.

7. "(Might Just) Make Me Believe," Sugarland. Jennifer "Cagney" Nettles is the shticky blonde singer in the tight striped low-riders walking around through "cricks" and pines. Kristen "Lacey" Hall actually writes the songs and plays guitar. Guess which one's expendable? Answer: Bluebird-cafe singer songwriter and plus-sizer Hall left the group earlier this year.

8. "When I Get Where I'm Going" by Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton. We love country songs about heaven. The story line always works -- happy life gets cruelly snatched away but is regained on the "other side;" or, cruel crappy life finally becomes happy when you reach your "final reward." More simply, we just wholeheartedly agree that it's gotta be better "up there" than "down here," where the hideous schizophrenia of modern life leaves us with just enough energy to weakly implore Santino to learn how to fucking sew, already, on Project Runway. At a certain point in life (like now), it's just a lot more reassuring to imagine that this isn't "all there is." That's just us. So once again, we're feeling the aching, macabre Paisley duet, again with a rumored yet avowed and proven non-lesbo, especially since the video has a series of guest stars holding up photos of deceased loved ones -- including, no joke, Michael Reagan with a photo of Ronnie, and Mrs. Dale Earnhardt with a framed illustration of the Intimidator, direct from the Garage Mahal.

9. "Who Says You Can't Go Home" by Bon Jovi feat. Jennifer Nettles. The bimbo from Sugarland makes a stop in Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora's own Mellencamp-esque, "In a Smalltown" rip-off. The point is, you CAN go home again. And when you get there, you will find two guys in their forties with chicklets for teeth and Bruce Jenner-like feminizing plastic surgery. And there will be a team of Habitat for Humanity workers wearing Bon Jovi tee shirts. And a mugging, grimacing floozy will be making awkward, vaguely hip hop-inspired arm gestures like some kind of even-lamer Gwen Stefani outfitted in American Eagle instead of Vivienne Westwood.

10. "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" by Trace Adkins. The hilarity of a sub-sub Toby Keith/Ray Benson type serial rapist-looking redneck using rap slang in da club just rules. Sign us up! This song has about as much to do with country music as "Who Let The Dogs Out," but it has everything to do with mocking hip hop's language and culture of sexism, while asserting the equal radness of country's culture of sexism down in Dixieland. White Power! Also, who knew that the lyrics "Got it goin' on / Like Donkey Kong" were ever gonna happen? BTW, this piece of Shiite was #1 on the Video Countdown. Did you see that Primetime Live about those two kids who got high on meth and wandered off into a blizzard and thought a pasture full of cows was a group of 200 foreigners who didn't speak English and refused to help them? It's like that.