There’s a man who walks beside me
It is who I used to be
And I wonder if she sees him
and confuses him with me

I realized today while listening to a different song, that some of my favorite songs are stories told in the first person about people who are very not nice people. They have a real impact because you are asked to identify with the speaker (because it’s written in first person) and then you find out they are a bad person and you have to imagine yourself as that bad person.

I first heard Jason Isbell when he performed live with John Prine. I liked a lot of the songs he sang, but I didn’t discover “Live Oak” until the next day when I put Isbell’s name into Pandora music and it came up at random.

There’s an expression in this song that I’m not familiar with. Maybe someone can straighten me out:

The jealous innuendos of the lonely hearted men
Let me know what kind of country I was sleeping in

What’s the part about “country” supposed to mean?

  • Listen to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvZoQhHi65Q
  • Read about the album: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeastern_(album)