This summer, country music fans are getting something that many other kinds of fans wouldn't appreciate: unsolicited advice. Maybe it's pure coincidence, but four of the season's most popular country songs come with instructions included. On radio stations and on the country-music cable networks (CMT and GAC), the genre sounds unexpectedly stern these days, thanks to the singers who are moonlighting as counselors.
Brad Paisley, whose "Alcohol" is sung in the voice of alcohol itself.
(For RealPlayer)
'Help Somebody,' by Van Zant
'The Talkin' Song Repair Blues,' by Alan Jackson
'Don't Ask Me How I Know,' by Bobby Pinson
The duo Van Zant, whose "Help Somebody" evokes the homespun wisdom of a "hillbilly scholar" grandfather and a 93-year-old grandmother.
If you're going to be imparting wisdom to your listeners, you should have some life experience to draw from. That explains "Help Somebody," (audio clip) a four-minute song in the imperative mood performed by a 99-year-old named Van Zant. Actually, those 99 years are split between two Van Zants: Donnie, a founding member of .38 Special, and his brother Johnny, the lead singer of the reconstituted Lynyrd Skynyrd. (A third Van Zant, Ronnie, the original leader of Lynyrd Skynyrd, died in 1977.) As Van Zant, the two brothers recorded a pair of Southern-rock albums together, then cannily switched genres for the country album "Get Right With the Man" (Sony Nashville).
Van Zant's country makeover required a shift (though not a huge one) in sound: fewer bluesy guitar solos, more shimmering organ. It also helped the duo capitalize on its age and legacy. Much more than rock 'n' roll, country music has a place for grizzled veterans, wise elders and proud throwbacks; in "Help Somebody," the two play all three roles.
For extra authority, the lyrics evoke the homespun wisdom of a "hillbilly scholar" grandfather and a 93-year-old grandmother; channeling these ancient spirits, the Van Zants deliver messages small ("Never let a cowboy make the coffee") and big ("If you wanna hear God laugh, tell him your plans"). But the advice that really matters comes in the couplet that supplied titles for both the song and the album: "Help somebody if you can/ And get right with the man." To underscore this point, a gospel choir makes an unexpected entrance near the end, suggesting an even higher authority than the grandparents.
Another hit advice song comes from a rookie, the 32-year-old singer and songwriter Bobby Pinson, whose debut single is a list of don'ts called "Don't Ask Me How I Know." (audio clip) The song comes from Mr. Pinson's debut album, "Man Like Me" (RCA Nashville), and it has a big country-rock chorus separating verses quiet enough to show off the singer's slightly ragged voice. (In the video, he also shows off a very ragged cowboy hat.)
Instead of pretending to be wise beyond his years, Mr. Pinson coyly hints at what he's seen without saying it; when he sings that title phrase, it's hard to tell whether he's bluffing. And the lyrics shift between the specific ("Don't quit your high school football team halfway through the season") and the general ("Don't rush off the phone when your mama calls - you ain't that busy"), which helps keep didacticism at bay. You can never be sure whether he's singing about his life or yours, or neither.
On his new single, Brad Paisley performs a similar balancing act. In 2003, Mr. Paisley released the hugely popular album "Mud on the Tires," which included both the easygoing title track and "Whiskey Lullaby," a duet with Allison Krauss that must be one of the grimmest - and most memorable - recent ballads in any genre.
In "Alcohol," the first single from his forthcoming album "Time Well Wasted" (Arista Nashville), the advice is purely implicit. Mr. Paisley sings a first-person narrative in the voice of alcohol itself; the result is a lilting ballad that mainly sticks to comedy while hinting at tragedy.
The chorus begins in mock-heroic mode: "Since the day I left Milwaukee, Lynchburg and Bordeaux, France/ Been making the bars lots of big money and helping white people dance." But a few lines later, Mr. Paisley sounds a bit more bittersweet: "I can help you up or make you fall/ You had some of the best times you'll never remember with me/ Alcohol." This is the most appealing kind of advice song: a sneaky one, with a narrator - a liquid narrator, in this case - who refuses to pick sides.
And then, finally, there's Alan Jackson, the country singer who has a hit with a witty pseudo-advice song that could be a sly rejoinder to the other three. The video for "The Talkin' Song Repair Blues," (audio clip) from the album "What I Do" (Arista Nashville), begins innocently enough: a man's car breaks down and he visits a mechanic; over a sparse groove, Mr. Jackson talks the verses and sings the chorus.
Then things get weird. Turns out the mechanic is also an aspiring country star, and he recognizes the singer (who isn't, as it happens, portrayed by Mr. Jackson), saying, "Ain't you that famous songwriter guy?" The mechanic serenades our beleaguered protagonist and asks for advice.
Instead of delivering some platitudes about how we've all got dreams, our mischievous narrator gets all technical, paraphrasing the mechanic's jargon. "Your whole melodic structure's worked itself loose," he explains, and it gets worse. "You've got a bad safety problem with/ That dominant chord with the augmented fifth/ Just see how dangerously high it raises you up?" And Mr. Jackson's voice suddenly swerves toward falsetto to illustrate the point.
Those other advice songs all depend on singers who can sound like sages, and on listeners willing to believe that singers have something to say; willing to believe that a singer can become a character. Maybe that's why it's so much fun to hear Mr. Jackson deflate this whole enterprise, suggesting that a songwriter is just another skilled technician, no more trustworthy than a car mechanic. At the end of the video, the songwriter leaves the mechanic working on his car and hitches a ride with a friendly driver who turns out to be Mr. Jackson himself; they zoom off together, singer and character side by side.
