Take the Girl! Here She Is! TAKE HER!!!

[sisabet]

Just for posterity's sake (ozonebaby and caille both linked to this article about the 25 most depressing --read: horrible-- songs ) I need to confess this:


Tim McGraw's "Don't Take the Girl" is one of the worst songs ever recorded. It isn't the *absolute* worst, but that is because there is so much competition. It isn't even the worst country song from the 1990's. Gah - it has really hefty competition from Billy Ray Cyrus and Travis Tritt and well - just about any of them really. The 90's were not a really great time to be seeking out quality country lyrics. Just sayin'.

But this song is on my shit list cause Tim McGraw opened for the first concert I ever attended (Dwight Yoakum and also? *sigh*) and therefore I was *forced* to not only listen to this treacle-fest in its entirety but I also had to sit as an entire arena full of absolute wusses erupted in tears. Whatever! Take the Goddamn girl and get this song over with!

(This is much the same reaction I had watching Moulin Rouge at the theater with Dawn. Satine just held on and on and on and my ass was asleep and She. Would. Not. Die. My god - I would try to be just a little sad about this if it wasn't taking so fucking long!)

Just so you know I am not completely heartless (hey, I like Dwight Yoakum! He has heart. And legs! Lots and lots of legs) I am gonna tell you a story about Nineteen Year Old Sisabet. We called her Liz.

When I was 19, my heart was broken. Actually, this tended to happen every couple of weeks as I was kind of a drama queen and liked excitement, but! But! This time was different. This time - moreso than the others, I actually *liked* the dude in question. I wasn't just attracted to him. I wasn't just infatuated with some aspect of him. I actively *liked* him as a person except when I totally and completely *hated* him. This was totally different. This was it. This was the Big One.

I became suitably excited about this. We bickered and snarked and were friends and kept trying not to end up making out somewhere in the dorm and FAILED REPEATEDLY. We were Dave and Maddie, at least in my head - I never said shit like that out loud back then. Wait. No - I totally did say shit like that back then. I moaned to my roommate that this would never work out, we were too different, we were friends and I had to stay away from him and all the while I am saying this, I am concocting ways to make certain we run into each other in a suitably dramatic fashion away from the dorm. Because it was Fate.

It was terribly exciting and not very real and horribly scripted and phoney (which is what happens when you don't have fanfic and are forced to try to live your life as television dictates you should) and I was a goner. The Casting Director of my Life had finally served up Appropriate Leading Man Material and I was all over it. Of course, come sweeps I had to go nuts and screw it all up and there was the Horrible Crushing Not Really A Breakup and instead of getting over it in a suitable time period, he decided to go star in his own spinoff and that bastard!

Needless to say, I was heartbroken. Or was experiencing a sensation that was closely akin to heartbreak. I knew that in ten years time - I would still look back on him and this with fondness and longing.

I was gonna be Trisha Yearwood in "The Song Remembers When."

I was gonna be 29 and I was gonna stop one day and look out at the setting sun (I don't normally pay much attention to sunsets, even when I was 19, but whenever I imagined Future!Liz she was always in a sunset setting) and these lyrics would resonate in my very soul:

Well, for all the miles between us
And for all the time that's past
You would think I haven't gotten very far
And I hope my hasty heart
Will forgive me just this once
If I stop to wonder how on earth you are


And then Trisha goes a little nuts with the singing and 19-year-old Liz would choke up thinking about 29 year old Liz and all her Woe.

Meanwhile - if time is really a line and all points on it are happening at once (All I Needed to Learn about Temporal Values I Learned from Madeline L'Engle) then 29 year old Liz is pretending she does not know 19 year old Liz.

Actually for many reasons. 19 year old Liz was exhausting. She didn't yet understand sugar and caffeine's affect on her and she was really and extremely bored all the time, which resulted in her attempts to manipulate the world around her to suit her fantasy-driven needs. She also thought that alcohol made her a fantastic dancer.

30 year old Liz is just glad she never caused a Cave-In.

19 year old Liz is still stuck in Rupp Arena listening to Tim McGraw forever. Poor child. It is like that one episode of The Twilight Zone.

Comments

[valancy.livejournal.com]

Hot damn, but yes. *memories*

[barkley.livejournal.com]

I hate Don't Take The Girl! And this is coming from someone who bought three Travis Tritt and only two Dwight Yokum albums in the 90s. I think my unabashed Travis Tritt love has to go up on my dork list. I am addicted to power country ballads. The only reason Tim McGraw is not on my demolish now list is because of his dad and because I like to say, "messed up in Mexico living on refried dreams." I don't like to sing that one, but I do like to say it.

"The Song Remembers When" reminds me of Hot Dog Heaven because that's where I was outside of when I first heard it. I do love your memories of it much better. Woe! Now I picture 19 year old Liz standing outside of Hot Dog Heaven while 29 year old Liz watches from the phone booth (even though there probably isn't one in the parking lot anymore. Not that there ever was.)

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

That song that Tritt sings about holding hands on the porch swing and something else... crap. "Drift off to Dreams"?? Is that it? I didn't want to like that song and I tried not to like that song and I resisted, oh how I resisted. It was a manful resistance full of me saying "NOOOOOOO!!" like a young Darth Vader and yet it was just as futile.

[barkley.livejournal.com]

Like track 14 on the Greatest Hits album? Yeah, I know the one. I was so going to play it at my wedding. This could explain why cosmic powers interfered and made sure I never got married in my 20s. *g*

[barkley.livejournal.com]

OK, I just looked it up. Track 15. Missed by one.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Oh man. Picking out the Wedding Songs. Yeah - its just something you do. I remember reading about Slash's wedding and how they played "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and I was all "yeah, that's cool!"

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

My three potential weddings songs were all melodramatic country songs. And the one that won was by John Michael Montgomery. And I was 23, so I'm not sure that was an excuse.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Hee - I used to see him at the Grapevine (cheesy bar in Lexington) when I was in college. I can understand the temptation.

[(Anonymous)]

I just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed the way you described that time period of insanity and infatuation/love/obsessive love,(but I felt it was done with an understanding of that age without apologizing for it) and the ways we manipulate and call it fate. I don't think I ever even thought there could be a reality outside of mine at ages 18-20. I always enjoy reading well-written descriptions of that time because I think for all of us we were in such an emotional and self-involved (I mean that in a painful/fun way) state that cannot be maintained. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that your writing triggered those memories for me.

Lisa

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Cool - thanks for letting me know.

I was just thinking about this 11 year meme that was circulating around and how, my god, I would never in a million years be able to deal with the life 19-year-old me thought she wanted.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

At 19 I got involved with Mudd. He proposed on my 20th birthday.
We were idiots. We didn't know a damn thing. We've made it anyway.

And this does tie in, because there is a certain Travis Tritt song that saved my marriage in 1995. I like a great deal of his work.

On the other hand, I LOATHE "Don't take the Girl." The only Tim McGraw song I really like is "My Next 30 years."

And i really despise the fact the country stations (with a few song exceptions) sound no different from the adult contemporary station. I can flip the channels and get "This one's for the girls" or "Getcha Good" on all three (2 country, 1 contempo)

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

All radio stations are the same. Clear Channel has sanitized and homogenized them for your protection.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I know.

My "Nekkid Boys of Star Wars" vid was conceived in a fit of pique at Clear Channel.

[wrenlet.livejournal.com]

I think there is a special-er level of Hell that consists of nothing but neverending death scenes. I was watching a Van Gogh bio-pic once, my ass and legs were asleep by the time he shot himself. Then it took him another hour and a half to die. *thump*

Greg got a good look at my graduation pics one day and said he wished he'd known me then, I told him, Nooooooo. No, you really don't. Eeek.

[juno.livejournal.com]

Don't take the Girl could be the worst song ever if it wasn't for Indian Outlaw and/or Muskrat Love.

What toasts my shorts is that people actually like and will admit to liking Don't take the Girl.

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

There is one day out of every 28 when "Take the Girl" will make me cry like a small child.

I hate it even more for that.