CMT Blog: Archive

A friend who is not a country fan recently heard Josh Gracin’s “Nothin’ to Lose” and announced that Gracin was mimicking Barenaked Ladies‘ “One Week.”

Without a country background, that assumption makes sense, but if anything, the song is more akin to “Ain’t Going Down (Til the Sun Comes Up),” a landmark single by one of Gracin’s sonic mentors, Garth Brooks. Gracin, to be clear, says he was not trying to emulate Brooks with that single, but they’re connected nonetheless.

Saturday marks 15 years since Capitol released “Ain’t Going Down,” and it’s an appropriate time to look at some of the spitfire lyrics that have poured out in popular music history:

•  Garth Brooks, “Ain’t Going Down (Til the Sun Comes Up)” — Harmonica player Terry McMillan is just as wild and speedy as Brooks.

•  Hank Snow, “I’ve Been Everywhere” — Johnny Cash’s version became a TV commercial, but Snow’s clever 1962 travelogue is the original.

•  Barenaked Ladies, “One Week” — “I’m all about value,” the band proclaims, possibly explaining why it crammed so many words into such a small space. Oddly enough, the song namechecks LeAnn Rimes, then 15 years old.

•  Josh Gracin, “Nothin’ to Lose” — The “breaker, breaker 1-9″ chorus references a fad that’s five years older than Gracin.

•  Reunion, “Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)” — Possibly the speedball winner, it namechecks tons of artists and songs, including Cash and John Denver, in a musical laundry list.

•  John Michael Montgomery, “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Accident)” — Slightly mimics an auctioneer in its good-time chorus.

•  Leroy Van Dyke, “The Auctioneer” — A real-life auctioneer puts the vocation to creative, and authentic, use.

•  Alan Jackson, “Good Time” — Jackson compares the tongue-twister chorus to a classic ad slogan: “Two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame-seed bun.”