My Country Music Memory Lane

What do you get when you combine Taylor Swift and Reckless Kelly on a Pandora station, you ask? 

Well, as I found out at work today, I was apparently asking for a serious trip down my very own Country music memory lane. One second I was in NYC working on a campaign presentation, then suddenly...

If I am truly crazy

Don't you know I like my life that way?

And if I'm really going on out of my mind

Won't you hop on board and make your getaway?

... I was swept away to my freshman year at TCU - where I first discovered Texas Country, more specifically Pat Green (Thanks Miss Meredith, a.k.a. Dot! :) ). To this day, "Crazy" is one of my very favorite songs. It still makes me go weak in the knees with all of the memories that come flooding back from that first year in Texas... Then...

Do you love me? Do you wanna be my friend?

And if you do, well then don't be afraid to take me by the hand

If you want to.

I think this is how love goes, check yes or no.

... I was 14 years old, sitting in Courtney's room, complaining about her radio choice of KMPS, one of Seattle's two Country music stations. A slave to the recent Boy Band/Britney craze, I refused to give Country a chance. That is, until I heard George Strait come on and sing one of the sweetest love stories I'd ever imagined. As he told the story of a little note asking him to "Check Yes or No"... I knew Country had me hooked. And suddenly...

Seventeen only comes once in a lifetime

Don't it just fly by wild and free

Goin' any way the wind blew, baby

Seventeen, livin' on crazy dreams

Rock and roll and faded blue jeans

And standing on the edge of everything

Seventeen

... I was back on a Maui beach during my junior year of high school, listening to Tim McGraw's "A Place in the Sun" album on repeat in my Discman. Sure, growing up in Seattle, I might not have ever actually let my legs hang off the Bayou Bridge or fed fish potato chips, but there was just something about "Seventeen." With that one song, I felt like Tim was almost writing the current chapter of my life - I was seventeen, rather hopelessly smitten with a certain boy, and as I recall, the stars really did seem to go off like fireworks...

And with that, I was pulled back to the present and the reality of my looming deadlines. Luckily I had my good friends Taylor and Reckless, providing a familiar and happy soundtrack to take me through the afternoon.

There are some times where good old-fashioned country music is still the best thing in the world.

-Jay DeMarcus, Rascal Flatts