In the Country of Country

Like Norm says, you can’t never have too many articles singing the praises of country music. So hats off to Simmy Richman for his excellent piece in the Independent today. He makes many of the essential points, not least the fact that this is universal music, not merely stuff for hillbillies and cowpokes (not that there’s anything wrong with hillbillies and cowpokes):

Were I ever to stop and question why this music was having such a profound effect on me, someone born so far from its origins, the answer might have lain exactly in that sense of distance – the space between what you are and who you want to be. Because if country music is anything summarisable, it is the sound of people born far from the bright lights who long to take their place and make their mark on the big city – a situation as understandable to someone from small-town Tennessee as it is to someone from Hendon, north-west London.