CMT Blog: Archive

It's so comforting to know that for just $15, we super fans can get all the therapy we need. And don't be fooled by the title of this book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life. It very well could've been called Country Music Will Save Your Life. The point is, it's for anyone who believes in the potency of music. The author, Steven Almond, describes these people: "We don't even dance well, though we do jump up and down at live shows and scream an awful lot, usually the names of obscure songs the band recorded but never released." He talks, too, about becoming infatuated with music and having blinding crushes on songs. He compares record-store douches to music geeks, concerts queens to groupies. And he has a chapter on rock's biggest assholes, one of whom is a country star. In a chapter called "What Songs Do," he talks about hearing Willie Nelson's "glorious, battered baritone" on Late Night With David Letterman and concludes, "The only thing wrong with music, as far as I'm concerned, is that you cannot eat it. From a purely emotional standpoint, it remains far more potent than any other artistic medium."