Country singers righting wrongs

                  By Brian Mansfield, Special for USA TODAY

                  The body count is climbing in
                  country music, and wayward
                  husbands are the prime targets.

                  A spate of songs by high-profile
                  artists is returning the murder
                  ballad to a place of prominence
                  in country. But where past
                  songwriters usually spun
                  cautionary tales of men killing
                  unfaithful wives and girlfriends,
                  these modern Gothic songs
                  more often depict women, or
                  even children, exacting revenge
                  for domestic abuse or male
                  infidelity.

                  "The good news is that murder's on the decline in the
                  world, but it's on the rise in country music," singer
                  Marty Stuart says.

                   *In Shedaisy's A Night to Remember, a woman
                  discovers love letters to her husband on their seventh
                  anniversary. After a romantic dinner, she sends their car
                  sailing over a cliff.

                   *Carrie Brown, by Steve Earle and the Del McCoury
                  Band, is an old-style murder ballad in which a man
                  becomes enamored with a woman and shoots her
                  boyfriend. The song contains the line "I shot him in
                  Virginia, and he died in Tennessee."

                   *A troubled 12-year-old prepares to kill his abusive
                  father in Lisa Angelle's Daddy's Gun, scheduled for
                  release in February. While he lies in wait, he envisions
                  his family reuniting in a heaven where "daddies always
                  care and Momma's tears will all be washed away."

                   *Most prominent, and perhaps most disturbing, is the
                  Dixie Chicks' Goodbye Earl, from their new album, Fly.
                  A likely single for the trio, Goodbye Earl plays the
                  poisoning of a wife-beater for laughs, breaking into a
                  celebratory chorus of na-na-nas after singer Natalie
                  Maines shouts, "Earl had to die!" ....

                  Many of the current songs draw inspiration from Garth
                  Brooks' 1991 chart-topper The Thunder Rolls and
                  Martina McBride's 1994 hit Independence Day and
                  their more violent videos, which implied women
                  retaliating against their husbands in lethal ways.
                  Goodbye Earl, A Night to Remember and Daddy's Gun
                  have similar themes. ....

                  Brooks, whose 1992 single Papa Loved Mama was
                  probably country's last big hit involving a murder, says
                  he's uncomfortable with the notion of singing about
                  murder.

                  "I guess I never took it as a murder song, even though he
                  does kill her. I hate the word 'murder.'"

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I had planned on trying to write a good entry today - just for a change of pace - but after having this article unexpectedly ricochet through my brain, I think I'll just spend the day sitting quietly in my room listening to Autour De Lucie's latest CD, "Immobile", instead.

It's entirely in French.  The fact that I don't understand a word of French should allow me to imagine that it's one big ode in praise of simple love, kindness, and/or marriage counseling.....

Hope your day is as full of such pleasantly plausible delusions!

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