Country Music Conversation
As an English major, we often discuss how literature tends to talk to one another, almost as if novels carry on a conversation through the decades. I have recently discovered that music does the same thing, if you listen or if you want it to.
Jana Kramer released a song called “I Got The Boy” in 2015. The song is about a woman who has grown out of innocent and adolescent love but is struck by memories when she sees that her first love is also grown up and now married. She relays the emotions and jealousy tied with seeing a past lover years later in a mature and settled down setting. The song juxtaposes the heartache of her time with a boy – using fake IDs and sharing his class ring – with a more matured version of the boy, turned into a man – with a tie and trimmed haircut signifying his growth. He is now settling down and marrying someone else and she is left only with past memories and wondering what their future would have been like if she got the man, too.
When listening to “Man Enough Now” by Chris Bandi, I could not help but connect the two as if “Man Enough Now” could be argued as a response to Jana Kramer’s “I Got The Boy.” Chris Bandi sings a heartfelt plea of apologies and reassurance to a girl that he wasn’t ready for at the time. He admits that he didn’t want to give his freedom up in the past but has since grown up and moved on, and so has she.
Bandi sings, “It's too bad we happened when we did ‘cause I've learned a lot about life since then” and “You fell in love with a kid trying to figure it out…I'm man enough now,” which sounds almost like a response to Kramer’s “I Got The Boy” in a unique way through the man’s perspective. In both cases, if combined into a conversation, a plea and a response, the girl in “I Got The Boy” and the man in “Man Enough Now” are both left wondering what could have been, even though their lives have since moved on.
Listen to "I Got The Boy" and "Man Enough Now" and let me know what you think of the conversation happening in the comments.
