The lyrics to my #30DaySongChallenge pick today are not “utterly mysterious” in a strict sense. As a whole, I know what the song is about. It’s stated right there in the title. Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson don’t want you, mamas, to let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Also, don’t let your babies pick guitars or drive them old trucks. Let ’em be doctors and lawyers and such.
This does not seem like an unreasonable request, given a certain sub-genre of country music that has never looked kindly upon philanderers, gamblers, and raconteurs. Some cowboy ne’er-do-well or another is the “you” at which every “You Did Me Wrong” country song is directed, after all. For all the stories celebrating these sorts of cowboys– and there is a long “outlaw country” family tradition of those songs, too– there is a corresponding story of heartbreak, infidelity, theft, death, or some other garden variety wrongdoing-by-cowboy.
Cowboys ain’t easy to love and they’re harder to hold.
It’s as if cowboys can’t help themselves. They are drawn to brothels and barrooms like moths to a flame. Their pride won’t let them do things to make you think they’re right. Their lives are an eternal recurrence in which they endlessly repeat Saint Augustine’s pear theft, forever “doing wrong for no other reason than that it is wrong.” And so, in 1978, Waylon Jennings penned a forlorn, slow-shuffle, heartfelt warning to new mothers, “Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To be Cowboys,” which is my #30DaySongChallenge pick for today.
Before you listen, let me say again that I do not think that all– or even most– of the lyrics to this song are “utterly mysterious.” For the first minute of the song, we have a completely straightforward account of cowboys, and an accompanying caution to mamas to not let their babies grow up to be like them. Then, at 1:10 in the recording below– right after the key change– Willie Nelson steps in for a cameo and sings THE MOST UTTERLY MYSTERIOUS TWO LYRICAL LINES in all of country music. Pay attention:
Cowboys like smoky old poolrooms and clear mountain mornings. Yeah, that seems right. Poetic even. What else do cowboys like? Little warm puppies, and children, and girls of the night.
[DJ RECORD SCRATCH] Hold up a sec, Willie. Whaaaaaaat?
I want to allow for the possibility that cowboys are complicated people. I mean, that’s consistent with the whole message of this song. Cowboys want things they know they shouldn’t want. They do things they know they shouldn’t do. They often can’t distinguish between when to hold’ em, when to fold ’em, when to walk away, and when to run. They’re just at home in a smoky poolroom as they are in the clear mountain mornings. Those are all the kind of intra-personal tensions that make sense.
But they like little warm puppies, children, and prostitutes? File that under “Things That Go Together Like Alcohol and Firearms.”
In Willie’s defense, he does appear to have taken another toke and, in the subsequent lines, he lobs what I think is meant to be an aporetic recovery: Them that don’t know him won’t like him, and them that do sometimes won’t know how to take him. Fair enough, I guess.
Still, I noticed this WTF moment in the song about ten years ago and now I cannot hear it without being like:
Runners-up for #30DaySongChallenge, Day 25:
- The Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”
- Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”
- Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” (mostly for this reason)
- The Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus”
- (the last minute-and-a-half of) Kanye West’s “Lift Yourself”
- Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”