Music Monday ~ The Poetry of It

Country music may be an acquired taste, I know that it is viewed with a certain disdain by some so-called liberals in the USA, perhaps due to the genre's connection to a perceived (rightly or wrongly) right-wing political flavour. I'm not a 'liberal', I suppose my label, if I must have a label, would be 'lefty', but I've loved country music from my first introduction to it in the late 1990s, back in Europe - not in the UK, but in the Canary Islands. There, of course, country music didn't have the taint of politics attached, so I experienced it clean and unadulterated.

What brought on that rantette? Well, I caught a few bars of a well-loved country song the other day, hadn't heard it for years. It struck me, once again, that there's a lot of poetry embedded in country lyrics! Rodney Crowell's lovely words in "'Til I Can Gain Control Again" are what inspired this post.


Just like the sun over the mountain top
You know I'll always come again
You know I love to spend my morning time
Like sunlight dancing on your skin

I've never gone so wrong as to telling lies to you
What you've seen is what I've been
There is nothing I could hide from you
You see me better than I can

Out on the road that lies before me now
There are some turns where I will spin
I only hope that you can hold me now
Till I can gain control again

Like a lighthouse you must stand alone
Landmark the sailor's journeys end
No matter what sea I've have been sailing on
I'll always roll this way again

Out on the road that lies before me now
There are some turns where I will spin
I only hope that you can hold me now
Till I can gain control again

Songwriter: Rodney J. Crowell.


The song has been recorded by numerous artists, as well as by its writer; best known recordings are by Emmy Lou Harris and Willy Nelson. Just for a change though, I enjoy hearing the Walker Brothers' cover version, I've always loved Scott Walker's voice:




Here's Emmy Lou's classic version: