Is This Better When I’m Not Listening?

To date, there have only been three country songs that I actively despise.  (These would be “hit” songs, of course, ones with enough radio airplay to boost them from “I don’t like this but won’t likely hear it again” to “God, I hate this, change the station!  Make it stop!”)

Those would be:

• Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl”, despised because of the bad poetry in the second verse.
   
• Colin Raye’s “That’s My Story (And I’m Sticking to It)”, his song about getting caught in a lie and just digging a deeper hole.
   
• Reba McEntire’s “She Thinks His Name is John”, about a woman who has a single instance of anonymous sex in her life and dies of AIDS because of it.

But they are now joined by a fourth, currently #1 on the Billboard Country charts, Blake Shelton’s “Who Are You When I’m Not Looking?” (also heard on Joe Nichols’ album from 2007, but not released as a single then — probably for good reason!).  Check out these first-verse lyrics:

My oh my, you’re so good-looking
Hold yourself together like a pair of bookends
But I’ve not tasted all your cooking
Who are you when I’m not looking?

Gack.  Make it stop.  Banal.  Insipid.  Lyrics that don’t add up to anything.  The second line doesn’t even rhyme.  (And I’m generally forgiving more forgiving about whether or not something rhymes when it is sung.)

No one has tasted all of my cooking, hon, not even me!  I keep making new stuff.  That pan-fried tilapia with paprika and bacon fat last night was nummy.