【鄉村月 Day 23】Eric Church – Chief、Lefty Frizzell – Look What Thoughts Will Do

Eric Church – Chief (2011)

I just said yesterday that I want to be honest with myself about contemporary country pop music, especially the country Thean Hou Temple, which is changing rapidly. However, listening to a more recent record today, I decided to introduce it.

Maybe I don't have a lot of experience with contemporary country, and I've put it off until the last week to gobble it up. After a few pictures, humanity is the most sincere original intention, but the more I listen to it, the more false it becomes, especially after absorbing so many classics of the old era. However, Eric Church's album caught my ear from the very first note: the turtledove sound of the opening song "Creepin'" is like a beacon that lights up the turbulent world, declaring that this is country music, no doubt! Although there will be a little turtledove in the early songs of a certain popular Xiaotianhou, the embellishment is basically negligible. Eric Church, on the other hand, does not let turtledoves, mandolins, and dobros become side dishes before electronic effects, even if the whole rock arrangement is made.

Even more rapping, Eric sings with country orthographic nasal and country accents. Although Auto-Tune is inevitably used in this era to add a modern flavor to the vocals, I feel that it is indispensable to maintain a country music in the high-spirited roar of smoke. For the cheesy smell of wine, listen to the guitar piece "Jack Daniels". I have to say that Eric Church has more expectations for me than Thean Hou Temple, which is why I picked this one today. By the way, "Springsteen", which is called Boss's elated heart, can be said to be the representative of the lyrics in the album, which makes people see Eric's talent.

This album gave me a basic blueprint for the direction of the modern country, and it's no wonder that Eric Church is well-received.

Lefty Frizzell – Look What Thoughts Will Do (1997)

Lefty Frizzell, one of the top singers in the country music world, is said to have the stage name "Lefty" because he used to fight with left hooks when he was a child...

Beginning by imitating Jimmie Rodgers singing (who isn't), he gradually preferred the kind of honky-tonk songs that Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams were good at, which were usually cheerful and rhythmic as important as the vocals. But Lefty deliberately stretches the sustain to produce a silky, dense vocal that sweetens the tavern tune. His singing skills have far-reaching influence on younger generations, such as Merle Haggard, who took him as an example to sing.

The talented Lefty can sing and write, so he rose to fame, becoming one of the successors of the pub singer after the early death of Hank Williams, and became popular in the early 1950s. But his personality has always been bohemian, drinking, profligate, crashing several times, and his messy private life quickly ruined his career, so that fame and fortune came and went quickly, and within a few years, he was almost out of interest. Although he tried to cheer up at the end of the 1950s, and also created a wave of small highs in the 1960s, a diseased alcohol addiction eventually ruined him, and he died in 1975 at the age of 47.

This collection contains 34 representative songs from different periods of his career, and it is a good introductory disc for getting to know the country singer.