i was entombed in the back room at work from 4:30 pm to 11 pm today. they played the world’s worst radio station. you might remember it from my THE CRANBERRIES meltdown a little while back, where ‘dreams’ by THE CRANBERRIES played every 15 minutes for no discernible reason.

BUT

the song that the radio station decided to play constantly today was carrie underwood’s “all american girl.” they played it 147,500 times in the six hours i was back there. which seems impossible, but it’s true.

if you’ve never heard the song, it’s one of those ones that was written for white girls with 4-wheelers and at least one camouflage baseball cap to dance to with their balding, red-faced fathers, generally at purity balls and first weddings. you know the ones. YOU KNOW THE ONES.

the basic plot is that a man wants his pregnant wife to birth a son he can take fishing and throw a football with. girls are unable to fish or throw footballs due to evolution, which has given us elbows that are only suited for carrying infants and laundry baskets. :(



the man also wants a son to take “pride and joy” in, which is just ridiculous. i have many brothers, two of which i’ve known their whole lives. they ate every booger they ever met as children. and teen boys smell like the portapottys at renaissance fairs, just protein farts and beer poop and funnel cake barf, almost constantly. why would anyone ever be proud of or joyful about that?



PLOT TWIST: the pregnant wife has a girl. in accordance with the law, the husband presumably casts his wife out of the village, because she is never mentioned in the song again. she’s not even really mentioned in the song at all, except for obliquely in the first line (“since the day they got married”). in fact, the nurse is the one who presents the inferior girlchild to him later.



(holy shit, did the mom die? was she killed because of her weak womb? this just got dark.)



but when the nurse came in with a little pink blanket

all those big dreams changed



no boy. no fishing. no football. no dreams. only void.

here’s the chorus:

and now, he’s wrapped around her fingers

she’s the center of his whole world

and his heart belongs to that sweet, little, beautiful, wonderful, perfect

all-american girl



this song, despite being called “all-american girl,” has nothing to do with the titular girl at all. she’s a total nonentity, even when carrie underwood is listing a series of adjectives that allegedly describe her! it’s incredible.



as an aside: a lot of my family history is made up of weird crackers, but not all of it, and nothing makes me more immediately, urgently aware of my brown ancestry than hearing white people use the phrase “all-american.” nothing. it’s always my cue to leave, because the conversation is probably about to get kinda klan-y.

sixteen short years later

she was falling for the senior football star

before you knew it he was dropping passes

skipping practice just to spend more time with her



i guess this is supposed to be romantic, but it’s the opposite. what we learn about this senior football “star” is that he’s a dumb idiot who’s bad at football and using her as an excuse to shirk his responsibilities. RUN, GIRL. this is how you end up at 22 with three ugly kids and a husband who resents you for “ruining” opportunities he never actually had! HE WAS GONNA GO PRO. HE COULD HAVE MADE IT. OBVIOUSLY. jesus christ. just go to work, aaron. those subway sandwiches aren’t going to rub e. coli all over themselves.

also, before i knew it? no. i knew it all along. it was my passes this fuckin slacker was dropping.



the coach said, “hey, son, what’s your problem

tell me have you lost your mind?

daddy said you’ll lose your free ride to college.

boy, you better tell her goodbye.”



and now, he’s wrapped around her fingers

she’s the center of his whole world

and his heart belongs to that sweet, little, beautiful, wonderful, perfect

all-american girl



this song is a goddamn sausage fest. why is the coach referring to this boy’s father as “daddy?” not “your daddy.” just “daddy.” daddy’s paying for this boy’s college, too, presumably contingent on the boy doing well at football. in this economy? HA. i think “daddy” is actually a sugar daddy, with many sugar sons(? is that what they’re called? sugarmerican boys?), among them the coach and this football child.



sugar daddington is probably angry that his sugar son is stepping out with this sweet little beautiful wonderful perfect all-american hussy, and is threatening to withdraw financial support. come on, football dummy! you know what you gotta do! MONEY IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS.

and when they got married and decided to have one of their own

she said, “be honest, tell me what you want?”

and he said, “honey, you ought to know…

a sweet, little, beautiful one just-a like you.

i want a beautiful, wonderful, perfect all-american…”



“do you want a male or a female child?” she asks, grinding her mysterious herbs with a mortar and pestle. she is a sorceress who can control these things. “tell me.”



“i want one just-a like you. i want you. give birth to yourself, witch. do it, you won’t.”



the sorceress laughs, smashing a mysterious worm into her bowl. “it is done, mortal.” she hisses, a white fog rolling forth from her loins and taking the shape of a woman, her doppelganger. it is identical to his wife, save for its hollowed eye-sockets and forked tongue. this is not what he wanted. he shouldn’t have skipped all those football practices.



now he’s wrapped around her finger

she’s the center of his whole world

and his heart belongs to that sweet, little, beautiful, wonderful, perfect

all-american girl



the circle is complete.



here’s the video, if you’re interested. it takes place in a dystopian nightmare where every woman in the world is now carrie underwood, and the real carrie underwood is trapped on one of the stargate: atlantis sets. it’s almost like aphex twin’s “come to daddy” video, but somehow scarier.



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