Country Musings: Cringe Country

As we approach Halloween season, here's a list of country songs that got creepy, but not in the fun way.

Sep 20, 2024

WARNING: This post contains sensitive subject matter and language. If that’s not your idea of fun, feel free to check out my many other articles in the archive.

First, allow me a moment to hype my Country cred.

I’ve sat backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, in Roy Acuff’s dressing room, as the man himself regaled me with tales from the old days, tuned his fiddle, and signed my Country Music Hall of Fame souvenir book.
I’ve met and shook the hands of Porter Wagoner and Minnie Pearl.
My first concert was Jerry Reed; my second was Willie Nelson (when I was 8 and 12, respectively).
I’ve primed tobacco, baled hay, and been chased by a both bull and a rooster (not at the same time, though).
I played harmonica and sang harmony in a bluegrass band when I was 13 while the median age of the rest of the band was 65.
I DJ’ed at - and programmed - country stations for the majority of my radio career.
I’ve sung both “Family Tradition” and “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” in cover bands…sometimes unironically.

I recount all this not to brag (although with some of these, I most definitely am) so much as to let you know that I’m not one of these folks who judge country music from the outside or as some Johnny-come-lately. I know country music. I’ve lived country music. I love “good” country music (just as much as I love blues, soul, jazz, and rock’n’roll)… which means I also know bad country music.

Like any genre, country music has had some truly incredible and classic songs throughout its history, but it’s also home to some of the most head-scratching and horrendously awful tunes ever recorded. There’s no way to even list all the badness the country format has given us over the years, but here are ten that never fail to leave me baffled and bewildered about how they got the green light.

To be clear, we’re not talking about bad as in incompetent musicianship or even bad song structures. In this piece, we’re talking strictly subject matter.

Many of these I played on the air when they were new, mind you, so most were actual hits. I was just as confused about that then as I am now.

Again, one more warning before you proceed. It’s going to get awkward, inappropriate, and - as the kids say these days - cringe, so proceed at your own risk…

Conway Twitty and Joni Lee - “Don’t Cry Joni”

Conway, the self-proclaimed “high priest of country music” (but also the horniest man alive back then), sings this mournful tale about a 23-year-old man who’s the object of a 15-year-old girl’s affection. He turns her down (thankfully) and moves away, yet can’t get her out of his mind (wait…what?), then moves back home to be with her - only to find out she married his best friend. You read that right. There’s no time stamp on how long he stayed away, either. Let’s hope it at least cleared his state’s legal age of consent.

The less said about the fact that Joni’s part is sung by Conway’s 16-year-old daughter at the time, probably the better.

The Kendalls - “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away”

Speaking of creepy father-daughter duets…What was the deal with the Kendalls? Their two biggest hits were “You’d Make An Angel Wanna Cheat” and this one, “Heaven’s Just A Sin Away”. This subgenre of country music is better known by its Latin name, blasphemous incestuous.

T.G. Sheppard - “War is Hell on the Homefront, Too”

T.G. Sheppard (along with Razzy Bailey and Mac Davis) was part of the “open-shirt-hairy-chest-album-cover gang” that was big in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when country became infused with spillover sounds from the disco craze. Suddenly, these guys just became an army of horned-up, late-night crooners. That was all well-and-good, until T.G. “I Loved ‘em Every One” Sheppard decided to glorify a kid getting it on with an adult woman, as he does here.

Atlanta - “Atlanta Burned Again Last Night”

For some reason, there was an inordinate amount of songs about underage boys “becoming a man” while in the throes of statutory passion, usually when the husband was off at war. Here’s another one, from a group that wanted to capitalize on the fact that Alabama had recently become a huge success, so they called their little group Atlanta, so maybe they could get some overflow fans. Not only that, but they also utilized a similar logo style, since their name conveniently began and ended with an A. (As far as I know, there hasn’t yet been a band named Alaska.* What are you waiting for up there?)

* Thanks to an email from former radio colleague and record store owner, Bill Harris, he informed me that there indeed was a band named Alaska in the mid-’80s, and it included former Whitesnake guitar legend Bernie Marsden. Maybe I suppressed that memory, who knows? Hey, you never stop learning!

Garth Brooks - “That Summer”

OK, fine. So in this one, she’s a “lonely widowed woman” and the narrator is a “teenage boy,” so there’s no adultery involved, and he could be 18 or 19. I could cut Garth some slack here, but this came out well over a decade after those other two, and - well, it still feels wrong, y’all. If this is a memory he has, well, that’s nice, but you don’t need to write a song about it. I guess you could credit Garth with inventing oversharing.

Holly Dunn - “Maybe I Mean Yes”

Holly Dunn had a few pleasant songs in the ‘80s and at the dawn of the ‘90s. I never rolled my eyes when I opened an envelope with a new single from her inside (like I admittedly did to a few others). Still, this one did raise an eyebrow. I vaguely remember some stations pulling it and even she agreed that it was not the best idea for a song - after receiving a bit of blowback. My station pulled it, too. And rightfully so. It’s just a tad tone-deaf, to put it mildly.

(I wish they’d have done the same with “Daddy’s Hands”, which is just as creepy, to be honest.)

Red Sovine - “Teddy Bear”

Lyrics provided without comment…

And as I rounded the corner, oh, I got one heck of a shock
18-wheelers were lined up for three city blocks!

Why, I guess every driver for miles around had caught Teddy Bear's call
And that little crippled boy was having a ball
For as fast as one driver would carry him in
Another would carry him to his truck and take off again

Well, you better believe I took my turn at riding Teddy Bear
And then I carried him back in and put him down in his chair

Merle Haggard - “The Girl Turned Ripe”

It should go without saying, but I will anyway: Merle Haggard is one of the greatest singers and songwriters America has ever produced. He has written so many inarguable classics that it’s just statistically inescapable that he’d miss the mark on occasion. This was definitely one of those times.

Tim McGraw - “Indian Outlaw”

Tim McGraw’s first single, “Welcome to the Club,” came out to not much fanfare. I played it on the air some; it was pleasant but not very different from anything else bouncing around the airwaves in ‘93. Then came this mess as the lead-off single from his second album. Its existence was almost like a dare. I remember thinking about the effort it took to arrange, produce, and perform this song in the studio, and then to release it and then hit the top ten. And to tag on NC native John D. Loudermilk’s “Indian Reservation” - a song that lamented the way of life for an entire group of Indigenous people - at the end? Oh, the caucasity of it all.

Brad Paisley and LL Cool J - “Accidental Racist”

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that, but when LL Cool J says “R.I.P., Robert E. Lee, but I’ve gotta thank Abraham Lincoln for freein’ me”, I - I just don’t know what’s real anymore.

“Accidental Racist” was included on Paisley’s ambitious 2012 album Wheelhouse. That album’s opening track, “Southern Comfort Zone,” encourages travel to places other than your own backyard, about the need to branch out, to expand/free your mind, not to live in an echo chamber, to learn about other customs. All very good ideas, executed in a much more successful way than “Accidental Racist.”

I do kind of admire what Paisley strived for here, but it’s ultimately a big swing and a miss. He really should just leave the examination of the complexity and duality of the Southern Thing to the Drive-By Truckers.