Ten Country Songs That Make Me Cringe: Coward of the County (#8)

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It's time to look at another one of those songs from the vast, nearly 100-year-old world of recorded country music that they could just send off in a rocket to one of those seven new exoplanets and never, never, never play again. When my dad and I discuss other types of music (none of which he likes), I always remind him of my saying: not all good music is country, and not all country music is good. This is one of my prime examples. #8: Coward of the County - Kenny Rogers I. HATE. This. Song. How do I really feel? Let me start with Kenny: I always thought he was far more "country" when he was with the rock group! The First Edition's mega hit, "Ruby (Don't Take Your Love to Town)," was written by Mel Tillis. After a few "comeback" hits in the mid-70s Rogers basically turned into the country music Lionel Richie (an accurate comparison if you consider that Rogers covered "Lady;" and, while Bob Seger was singing Rodney Crowell's "Shame on the Moon" Rogers was singing a Bob Seger song!). (And my apologies to Lionel: I kinda like "All Night Long (All Night)," and he did co-write "Brick House.") Richie's...er....Rogers' career began its rebound with the 1977 smash "Lucille" (quick show of hands: who else has sung that chorus as "you picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel"?). The same guy who wrote that wrote this piece of crap. And you know it was a guy who wrote it. Fellas, I don't care what the porn flicks say, women do not fantasize about being raped. So why on this earth would someone throw a gang rape into a song? C'mon, there's not even the implied social commentary of Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boy" (notice the guy never gets treatment for his perceived mental illnesses because "he's just an excitable boy") in this song. If you want to hear how a woman writes a song dealing with rape, listen to Gillian Welch's "Caleb Mayer." But that's only the half of it (and I know you're probably telling me, "wow, you are way over-analyzing this stuff;" however, in truth, I've felt this way about this song since I first heard it!). Tommy, the eponymous pacifist, isn't defending her honor when he beats the crap out of the Gatlin boys (more about their name in a minute), he's defending his. "Twenty years of crawling was bottled up inside him," not "he thought about his poor wife with every punch he threw." He only throws one for her pain -- the last one. And, at the end, he reiterates that he's out to make himself look macho: "sometimes you have to fight to be a man." Now, about the "Gatlin boys." Roger Dale Bowling, who wrote "Lucille" (and also wrote one of my favorite songs, Billie Jo Spears' "Blanket on the Ground"), wrote this. According to Larry Gatlin, head of the Gatlin Brothers trio who've had hits like "All the Gold in California" and "Broken Lady," after "Lucille" won all the CMA awards in 1977 Larry went to congratulate Bowling, and he said something unsavory and not-repeatable-here to Gatlin. Next thing you know, "there were three of them" (Larry, Steve, Rudy) rapists named Gatlin that show up in this song. I've heard Larry isn't the nicest human on the planet, but I've met Steve and Rudy twice at "country gold" concerts, and they're sweethearts. They didn't deserve that. Nobody deserves to be related however remotely to this crap. PS -- I just saw on Picky Wedia that they have Barry Gibb listed as co-writer. In a word, no. Coward of the County Written by Roger Bowling and Billy Edd Wheeler Recorded by Kenny Rogers From Kenny, 1979 From Kenny's country days in the rock band: