Saturday, April 3, 2010

Need for a New English Course in Texan Colleges and Universities: "Popular Lyrics by Texan Songwriters as Poetry"

I recently landed upon a strategy for promoting excellence in the lyrics being written by Texan-born songwriters and by songwriters residing in Texas.

The English Department of some enlightened college in the Lone Star State should offer a new academic course with a title such as, "Popular Lyrics by Texan Songwriters as Poetry."

It will be a course in which college students and professors in our state thoroughly scrutinize and then write papers evaluating and critiquing numerous published lyrics from a wide variety of Texan songwriters and musicians. The resulting dialogue will be both healthy and very sobering for our entire state and nation.

It will be a beneficial dialogue led by Texan academia that, over time, helps to elevate the caliber and moral value and philosophical depth of the lyrics being written by songwriters in and from our state.

At present, it's painfully apparent that if Texans were asked in a survey to cite the 10 most poetically profound and beautiful popular songs they can recall that were written by a Texan musician or songwriter, the vast majority of those Texans would be stumped by the question.

"I can't recall any such song," as one Texan respondent to that survey might confess in writing. "I do recall having once found it profound that some famous Texan musician once sang, 'It's up against the wall, Redneck Mother.' There seemed to be some deeper meaning to it all, at the time. However, today with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if that song wasn't a bit misogynistic.
"Is it really the mother's fault that her 'redneck' son turned out to be the coarse and reckless and misanthropic and recklessly alcohol-crazed and tobacco-addicted and physically violent and profanity-spewing one-man blight on society that he is?"

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