“Keepin' it Country”: What Makes the Lyrics of Gretchen Wilson Hard?

Abstract

Country music artist Gretchen Wilson differs from her female contemporaries in her lack of education, longhaired, big‐belt‐buckle, “redneck” look, and general rough‐edge exterior. In this paper, I look at how Wilson's distinctive image is “hard,” much like that of traditionally male singers like Merle Haggard. To illustrate what makes Wilson a hard country music singer, I show how the themes, allusive practices, and language of her lyrics fall in line with those identified as typically hard by Ching and Peterson.

Notes

1. The lyrics of Dale Watson often lament the state of commercial country music, and in “Legends (What If)” he seems to capture the sentiment of many country music fans when he describes the music of Shania as good, but “not country.”

2. Like her characters, Wilson also prefers shopping at Wal‐Mart and eating at McDonalds, and considers this symbolic of her refusal to become high‐class despite her increasing wealth and fame; even though now she usually has to send someone else out to do the shopping for her, she still sends them to Wal‐Mart (Green).

3. The theme of “rags to riches” as portrayed in these two songs will be addressed in her upcoming autobiography I'll Tell You What a Redneck Woman Is.

4. Ninety‐five per cent of consumers of chewing tobacco in the United States are men (Levere C5).

5. One group identifies itself with Nelson in their band's name, “The Little Willies.”

6. Rap artist Snoop Dogg's 2006 album Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, for example, features twenty‐five other artists on seventeen of the twenty‐one tracks.

7. This number refers to the number of songs recorded by these singers prior to the time this paper was written.

8. In Womack's “The Wrong Girl” she alludes to Merle Haggard with the line “I'll bet she never listens to Merle.”

9. Of the past four male and female CMA vocalists of the year, all use “ain't” more frequently than its alternants, and all except one (Keith Urban) use “don't” more frequently than “doesn't” with third‐person subjects.

10. In addition to “hell” and “damn,” “ass” also occurs in the lyrics of Urban and Keith.