The World According to Me By Mary Chapin Carpenter From Close Up Magazine, (A CMA Publication)
That you are able to read this is miraculous. This piece represents the ninth and final edit after drafts of the seventh angle, at which point I returned to the very first idea that I'd had. Whew! Don't even mention run-on sentences. I'm thrill in ignoring the tenets of creative writing teachers. A leftover response to receiving an F from my first college creative writing teacher, you ask? I also nearly failed the one music department course that I took. It's accurate to say that my early pursuit of a career as a writer and musician is characterized by an absence of bravado. The old F it's responsible for my disrespect of grammar; my attitude is due to a case of adult-onset Eddie Haskell Syndrome. EHS symptoms include the wish to get away with as much as possible.
The anxiety experienced during the writing of this piece saw me sweat enough to fill a massive order of Sammy Kershaw's eau de whatever bottle. [A few years ago, Sammy Kershaw announced on The Nashville Network that he would be selling his own sweat in concentrated form at his gigs.] I've endured sleepless night worrying about this content, gone cross-eyed in front of the word processor doing word counts and done a great deal of walking the floor (thank you, Mr. Tubb) just for the tortured writer effect. No singing! No music! Think of the next sentence, not the next bridge! With some luck and a good spellcheck program, I made it through. FYI: Recently I heard luck defined as the thing that happens when preparation meets opportunity. Pretty astute. Oh, all right, the truth is Sharon Stone said it in an old Vanity Fair magazine. Sharon, you Babe-raham Lincoln, you!
I'm an extremely private individual. But on my 10th anniversary as a Columbia artist, I'm ready to open up. Vaingloriously, but in keeping with the appropriately high spirits, I offer you THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ME.
Ahem. Let us begin.
In the last decade, Country Music has prospered because of its willingness to change. Towards the end of the 1980s, I myself was a beneficiary of such change within the format when, as a so-called non-traditional artist, I got a deal. The careers of Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell and others changed many people's minds about what Country Music could look like, be like and be about.
I've spent the last decade doing my own explaining about how it feels being known as a Country artist. I remember walking off the stage of the CMA Awards in 1990 after I had sung a novelty song I had written called You Don't KnowMe (I'm the Opening Act). Within moments I was a beaming Chapin sandwich, between Miss Minnie Pearl and Mr. Tennessee Ernie Ford. In unison they expressed how much they loved the performance and that they were not only proud of me (yow!) but glad I was in Country Music. What a gift they gave me by saying that.
Since that time, I've spent many an interview waiting for an opening while my inquisitor has hammered away at how implausible my career in Country Music is. Based upon the fact that:
1. I was born in New Jersey. 2. No one in New Jersey knows where Nashville is. 3. I went to an Ivy League University. 4. No one at an Ivy League University knows where Nashville is. 5. The first record I bought was a Beatles album, not a George Jones album.
My responses to the above statements are as follows:
1. True 2. False 3. True enough, but who cares? 4. How long have you been stupid? 5. So sue me.
This is the type who has no idea who Guy Clark, or the late great Townes Van Zandt or Matraca Berg are, when they ask which writers and performers I admire. I can tell by the blank expression on their faces and a sound they emit, like a cross between a chortle and a grunt as if they meant to ask who but then thought better of it. Now I'm not saying that we all have to be walking/talking encyclopedias of music, but doing a little homework wouldn't hurt. Sighing, I explain that my kinship for Country's story-driven, lyric-oriented tradition has everything to do with my sense of comfort in being known as a Country artist. The anecdote ends with the understanding that the good karma of Miss Minnie and Tennessee Ernie Ford will always be worth more than a gazillion validations from critics or publications that consider themselves the arbiters of all things cool or Country or contemporary.
Lest you think I only whine, wait! It's been great to see the award shows get rid of the hay bales. And it's been great to see performances of the music regularly included on major motion picture soundtracks as well as on the late night shows. And it's been great that women now see platinum as their goal, not their fantasy.
We've got all this good stuff to inspire us as we continue to work on removing the double standards of worth as they effect Country artists in the entertainment industry and in corporate advertising. And while we're at it, let's point out the inaccuracy of labeling music made in 1997 as "Country and Western" when "C&W" was primarily employed as a marketing term before World War II.
The current complaints within the industry towards the industry share a concern with the "sameness" of the artists and their music. This most recent spell of collective yawning springs from the manner in which things loosen up for a while and then constrict. Then they loosen up again and are followed by more constricting.
Last time I looked and listened, the labels were continuing to sign new acts, but to these ears, the acts haven't been taking many chances. Everyone has various theories as to why this is, but one that gets little argument is that a crowded marketplace inspires caution more often than it fosters experiementation, a.k.a. pushing the boundaries. It's sometimes akin to asking what came first, the chicken or the egg? In THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ME , it's the way the tea leaves have always been read: the trends of popular music lurch forward, lurch back, lurch forward again, pull back again, much like a health rider machine gone berserk.
At the end of 1996, the sound-the-death-knell articles about the lost boom of Country Music appeared side by side with the rock critics obituaries of alternative music. I thought it was pretty funny, considering that everything old always ends up new again. It's good news if you're a pack rat. Thank GAWD you didn't dump those Candies pumps or those nouveau Marxist rockabilly records you picked up a few years back. In the meantime, keep that blue eye shadow away from me.
Whatever it is we welcome back or can't wait to get rid of one more time, we can rely on this: at the first sign of the music showing its cyclical instinct, the industry pundits will de-construct, dissect, and disseminate, and the Sunday New York Times arts section will come up with yet one more hysterically funny piece that pronounces the latest Next Big Thing as a hip (and therefore quite welcome) renaissance or a tacky revival. If you can't count on the New York Times for attitude who can you count on?
In THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ME , ratings, research, caution, hype, excellence, consultants, trends, intuition, demographics, politics, market share, risk, bumps, breakers, and blather are just a few things that define us. (Hmmm, you're thinking, not much difference between this and the last presidential election!) Here is the difference: somewhere within the industry vernacular is the one thing we're all in this for: music. Yet it's the thing that from my point of view is at the greatest risk of being lost.
Not all hits are about hooks. And not all hooks add up to a good song. When a research volunteer is given between five and 15 seconds of a song to listen to an develop an opinion about, I wonder what happens to the music. Not as someone bent on slagging research, but as a writer and performer whose work is often difficult to define numerically. It takes time to tell a story, to lead up to something, to engage someone's ears as well as their emotions. I understand that research is an indispensable tool to programmers seeking to identify and play hits. But as the competition for winning ratings grows more intense, so does the danger that research could all but replace that mysterious thing known as gut instinct. And if gut instinct disappears, what happens to the music?
It should tell us something that as we reduce songs to little more than 10 second sound bites, the careers of artists can't last much longer than two minutes. I believe that Country Music - like every other genre of music - needs to remember that careers last because of the quality of talent, the gift for connecting, the unique vision of the artist, the passion for the music, the utter futility of separating the artist from the art and, most significantly, the songs.
In THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ME , the music will always be the most important thing. Take away the singles, the charts, the awards, the record deals, the tours, the commercials, the bright lights, and what do you still have? The music, of course. It was there for me long before a record deal came along, and it will be there long after the deal has expired. Thanks for reading.
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