Waylon Jennings’ “Cedartown, Georgia” ( 1971) is both an amazing and horrifying song. In it, our grizzled hard workin’ protagonist describes his plan to murder his cheating wife in a most relaxed, tuneful, and matter of fact way. It’s so great and so f-ing wrong at the same time. It is absolutely as creepy and beautiful as Bobbie Gentry”s legendary “Ode to Billie Joe”. Country music has openly embraced and sung about terrible crime scenarios for decades, centuries, long before all the now beloved Dateline’s, Serial’s, My Favorite Murder’s and their brethren hit the video and audio airwaves. While the country music death march has slowed down considerably over the years, there have been some pretty cool assertive, feminist revenge party songs that have waved the murder flag pretty effectively in the 2000’s, Miranda Lambert’s “Gunpowder and Lead”, and Carrie Underwood’s “Two Black Cadillacs” to name a couple. Today though, want to exult a damn fine murder ballad with no “winners”. Tim McGraw is a beloved country superstar who, since his debut in 1993, has racked up countless piles of platinum and # 1 albums and singles. I’d take him over Blake Shelton, Luke Bryan or any of the other supposedly “hunky” doofus’s out there because he has some properly good songs and frankly, seems way cooler. With that in mind we’re going to go back in time so we can shine a light on his superior contribution to the irrational, jealous country murder ballad canon. In 2009 Tim released his tenth studio album, “Southern Voice” and nestled within it was a song called “Good Girls”. It was written by pedigreed country songwriters Chris Lindsey, Aimee Mayo ( who co-wrote Lonestar’s crossover megahit “Amazed”) and the Warren Brothers ( who co-wrote Dierks Bentley’s country # 1 “Feel That Fire”). While Tim is the narrator in the song, he is not an active participant in its storyline and is just there to tell the terrible tale . The story he relates is about 2 best girlfriends, Jesse and Jenny. Jesse calls Jenny to insist they hang out, drink some Boone’s farm wine and chase the moon right outta the sky. They hop in Jesse’s car and take off like a bottle rocket. Turns out Jesse has an ulterior motive which is to confront Jenny about messing around with Jesse’s man. It doesn’t go well. Next verse Tim offers up is about the news report the next day which tells of a car parked on the tracks and a train with no time to stop. The only witness to the whole event is “a Weeping Willow on a foggy hill” and as Tim is describing it all in detail, well, for all intents and purposes, he is the all-knowing, noble and empathetic tree ( being the only one privy to what happened in the car that preceded/resulted in the tragic ending)…which I very much like the idea of. It’s got an achingly earnest vocal, and is built on a foundation of crying guitar straight out of the wistful, dusty old Bob Seger ballad “Main Street” ( which is also awesome). Yeah,“Good Girls” sounds like a Dateline episode put to music but it’s also really f-ing good. And even with its glossy, not remotely gritty or raw production there’s still something oddly striking, sinister and retro about it. Something that brings to mind that dark old country tragedy tradition. Let it proudly hold its irrational, impulsive head up next to “Cedartown” forever.
“If I can’t have him neither one of us will”. You better believe it.
Hear it here:
And here’s Waylon’s beautiful and wrong “Cedartown, Georgia”:
PICKING UP ROCKS 