truck songs of the week
chardonnay, down home prayers & flames
This week is hot. It’s the boiling point. It’s an enemies-to-lovers-back-to-enemies plot line.
Drive safe.
Get the full 2024 playlist here.
“He Set Her Off” by Emily Ann Roberts
This rollicking revenge fantasy is the granddaughter of Miranda Lambert’s “Kerosene.” Country music gives so much airtime to women’s anger1, especially when there is a body count.
[See: Taste of Country “Earl Had to Die: The 20 Best Country Songs About Killing Your Man]
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube
“In The Bible (feat. HARDY)” by Morgan Wallen
Every once in a while, there is a country song that is more like the template for a country song than a country song itself. This Morgan Wallen song, with its unspecified trucks and cold beers, is one such song. Here, these country objects are elevated to religious artifacts.
Take a whiskey shot for the reference to John 3:16.
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube
“I Can Feel It” by Kane Brown
This R&B-infused track is fucking sexy. In a crazy way.
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube
While the violence often breaks out after someone has cheated, a tremendous amount of country music revolves around revenge fantasies against perpetrators of domestic violence. In the hyperreal world of country music, hitting your girlfriend is the highest sin, worthy of capital punishment. See: “Goodbye Earl” by The Chicks, “Independence Day” by Martina McBride, “Gunpowder & Lead” by Miranda Lambert, or “wait in the truck (feat. Lainey Wilson)” by HARDY. Lately, I’ve reflected that “country” as a concept is largely untethered from any particular location or identity but these prevailing anxieties suggest the dark side of what or who is country.
David Bowie: Putting Out the Fire (Gasoline)!