I wanted to do a “to be fair here, Cash had songs with stupid lyrics, too”, but all I can think of is “Ring of fire” and that one is just a harmless metaphor about love.
I’d argue that Ring of Fire is a metaphor about forbidden love that you know is damning you but the feelings are too powerful to resist.
Rather than a harmless metaphor, I find it an incredibly powerful metaphor about the pain and suffering caused by helplessly loving the “wrong” person.
I don’t think modern country even uses metaphors anymore. Before anyone comes at me, I’m well awair that there’s some fantactic country writers out there.
I wanted to do a “to be fair here, Cash had songs with stupid lyrics, too”, but all I can think of is “Ring of fire” and that one is just a harmless metaphor about love.
I’d argue that Ring of Fire is a metaphor about forbidden love that you know is damning you but the feelings are too powerful to resist.
Rather than a harmless metaphor, I find it an incredibly powerful metaphor about the pain and suffering caused by helplessly loving the “wrong” person.
Plus, there’s an opportunity to make STD jokes.
It’d be a more powerful metaphor if he wasn’t a massive manwhore and his “love” wasn’t any fan with great tits, or his second wife’s sister.
Well, yeah. No one said he wasn’t flawed.
Yeah, that was the point, you nailed it fam.
He didn’t actually write Ring of Fire
He didn’t write several of his songs. That’s really common. Many writers are not performers.
Ring of Fire was written by June Carter, and first released by her sister Anita Carter.
Ring of fire is my song to sing when I’ve had too much Mexican food and beer.
“One Piece at a Time” is less of a country song and more of a novelty song.
Yes, so is “hey porter” or “boy named sue”, but those are sung jokes of a sort which gives them a purpose ;)
And A Boy Named Sue was written by Shel Silverstein, so you can’t really pick on that one.
You absolutly can pick on it and you should, and you’d wholeheartedly agree if you knew the sequal song Shell wrote.
I’m intrigued. Educate me.
Here’s audio
And here’s the lyrics
Basically tells the story from the dads perspective.
Tldr the dad fucks the boy.
Damn. :(
I don’t think modern country even uses metaphors anymore. Before anyone comes at me, I’m well awair that there’s some fantactic country writers out there.
“One piece at a time”
Also still fairly anti capitalism. The whole core is “I worked at a Cadillac factory making cars I could never afford with what they paid”.
That’s a classic, and I won’t hear one word against it.
And it didn’t cost me a dime!