While lifestyles differ in many ways, US and UK artists share a lot of common themes when it comes to songwriting.
Even though UK country festivals are also often held on farms and in fields, there are no hollers or canyons here. Although plenty of truckers go up and down British motorways, they can get from the North of Scotland to the English Channel inside a day, rather than drifting across interstate freeways for days on end. Country fans in the USA are far more used to getting up before dawn to avoid the heat of the day as they labour, and after work they have riverbanks or honky-tonks to go to; those in the UK seldom have any heat to complain about.
There are certainly UK artists writing songs about Nashville, or two-step numbers perfect to line-dance to. But in the last decade a couple of dominant strains of country songwriting have come about, supported by airplay on Radio 2 and programmes that play UK music. Given that everybody falls in and out of love, it is common for songwriters in UK country to write about heartache or true love; after dealing with the office all week, people need to let their hair down and party at weekends, and plenty of singers can oblige with songs set in the bar or the club.
The heavy influence of what is still called singer/songwriter and rock’n’roll informs plenty of confessional or anthemic writing respectively, which is perfect for either a listening room or an arena. Some acts succeed by having both of these sorts of songs in their repertoire. If country music is about storytelling, then UK acts are full of stories, be they about something personal or universal.
And what is ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ by The Proclaimers if not the finest UK country song ever written, although Paul McCartney may have staked a claim by writing a song about his troubles being far away, ‘Yesterday’. Eric Idle, meanwhile, tells us to ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’, which is a very country sentiment; Neil Innes, who contributed the whistling hook, always thought it was a country song, so it is!
I think we can all agree, while there are plenty of areas where the US and UK country lifestyles differ, there are even more where they are just the same. And therein lies the ties that bind us.
