It is no longer unusual to encounter a song by a mainstream country star that requires an “explicit lyrics” tag. But it is unusual to encounter one that requires a spoiler alert. The song, if you would like to encounter it unspoiled, is called “the mockingbird & THE CROW,” and it appears at the midpoint of an album with the same title, which was recently released by a singer and songwriter from Philadelphia, Mississippi, named Michael Hardy, who has dropped his first name and capitalized all the letters in his last one. The song starts, as so many country songs do, by conjuring small-town life, and it culminates, at first, in a wry chorus that’s surprisingly forthright about the nature of country stardom: “I’m a mockingbird/ Singin’ songs that sound like other songs you’ve heard.”
HARDY made his mark as a high-concept craftsman, finding new ways to give country listeners what they wanted. His breakthrough single, “ONE BEER,” from 2019, began with a startling evocation of kids worrying about an unexpected pregnancy (“Seventeen in a small town, weak knees in a CVS”), but it turned out to be both a drinking song and an ode to settling down: “Ain’t it funny what one beer can turn into?” And he helped write Blake Shelton’s No. 1 country hit “God’s Country,” which converted the treacly term into a truculent declaration of regional pride. “The Devil went down to Georgia, but he didn’t stick around— this is God’s country,” Shelton snarled.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 13, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 13, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
