yesterday

while making crepes, a song came on the radio. It starts:

"I can make anybody pretty.
I can make you believe any lie.
I can make you pick a fight with somebody twice your size.
Well, ve been known to cause a few break-ups,
An' I've been known to cause a few births.
Well, I can make you new friends, or get you fired from work."


It's a song by Brad Paisley called "Alcohol".

I like listening to country radio, but I realize that most of the songs on it are fluff. They're nice fluff, and entertaining the first few times you hear them, but they grow very wearing after awhile, and you're glad when something new comes along.

But this song struck me as one of the classics, you know, the sort that they might play years later, like "Luckenbach, Texas" (sp?) or "Crazy".

For the first time in a long time (the last time was when I heard Derek Webb's "Crooked Deep Down"), I'm tempted to by a cd because of a song I heard on the radio.

You've got to love a song which is narrated by alcohol personified, and that gives him lines like "I've influenced kings and world leaders/I helped Hemingway write like he did/And I'll bet you a drink or two, that I can make you put that lampshade on your head . . . I am medicine and I am poison/I can help you up or make you fall/You had some of the best times you'll never remember with me/Alcohol."

Great lyrics; one of the most realistic songs ever. I think that line "I am medicine and I am poison" sums it all up: alcohol is one of those gifts given to man that can "gladden the heart" or make you go down like a ship at sea, all hands lost.

Anyway, that was a song I really enjoyed yesterday. I liked singing along while it was playing, and it made me stop and reflect afterwards. It was refreshing to hear a non-fluff piece on the radio.

-Jess