As a fan of country music since I was a small child, it pleases me when someone who "hates" country is shocked to be moved by a song of that genre. For example, many of my friends who don't like country are nevertheless moved by this song.
I have been looking forward to reading The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (review of the book) and my face broke out in a big grin when I learned that "Stealing Cinderella" was a major reason the book was written. From Amazon:
What inspired you to write this book?
I was speeding down the highway on a gorgeous autumn day, cheerfully spinning through the FM dial, and a country music song came on. My normal response to this sort of catastrophe is to turn the channel as quickly as possible. But that day, for some reason, I decided to listen. In "Stealing Cinderella," Chuck Wicks sings about a young man asking for his sweetheart's hand in marriage. The girl's father makes the young man wait in the living room, where he notices photos of his sweetheart as a child, "She was playing Cinderella/ She was riding her first bike/ Bouncing on the bed and looking for a pillow fight/ Running through the sprinkler/ With a big popsicle grin/ Dancing with her dad, looking up at him. . ." And the young man suddenly realizes that he is taking something precious from the father: he is stealing Cinderella. Before the song was over I was crying so hard that I had to pull off the road. I sat there for a long time feeling sad about my own daughters growing up to abandon me. But I was also marveling at how quickly Wicks's small, musical story had melted me into sheer helplessness. I wrote the book partly in an effort to understand what happened to me that day.
Many country songs are stories. Here are a couple of my favorites for you:
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