A Little Bit Country

So this year my husband and I spent Thanksgiving with his family. And one night, as usually happens when families gather, we all ended up in the kitchen together, and after flowing across a wide variety of topics, the conversation eventually turned to music.

First up was my sister-in-law, whose musical tastes range from hip hop, to country, to rock. But apparently when she and her husband ride in the car together, their musical tastes collide.

“He claims that listening to country music makes him physically ill,” she said. “But I told him, ‘Stephen-you cannot get a headache from a specific genre of music!’ ”

So then that was the perfect segue into a never ending struggle conversation that my husband and I frequently have about some of the songs in his music collection. Specifically, the song, “What The World Needs Now Are A Few More Rednecks.” Which is CLEARLY a country song, although not according to my husband, as I discovered the first time I heard him play it.

“I thought you didn’t like country music,” I said, confused.

“It’s not country. It’s SOUTHERN. ROCK.”, he replied.

I’d gotten tired of rolling my eyes at him all by myself, so I decided to win everyone else over to my side get a few second opinions as long as we had some other people around. So I told them about my husband’s misguided classification of that particular song.

“Well, who sings it?” asked my mother-in-law.

“The Charlie Daniels Band”, said my husband, grudgingly.

And then the kitchen erupted in disbelief, which made the part of me that likes being “Right!” so very, very happy.

“So what about Johnny Cash?” asked my sister-in-law, knowing that he was also a favorite of my husband, and curious to see what my husband had to say about this UNDISPUTED star of the country music  world.

“He’s ‘bluegrass‘,” clearly losing this argument, but refusing to abandon his staunchly-held beliefs.

“Wow,” I said, stunned, looking at my husband as if I were seeing him for the first time. “I had no idea just how much you were lying to yourself  about this!”

He was not amused.