Will o’ the Wistful

Man, how it pains me to say the words, but I do have a favorite Kenny Chesney song in spite of how he briefly ruined an element of country music with the whole Beach Cowboy schtick that even affected George Strait, for crying out loud.

At any rate, I heard it on the radio the other day. “Young“:

The strangest thing about it is the double-effect nature of it (I am Mr. Double Effect Narrator right here). When I first heard it ten years ago, I was a little wistful appropriately for my teenaged years (although briefly and only at a surface level, of course, but that is the will o’ the wist).

Now, of course, I can be both wistful for its content and wistful for the time when the song was new.

In related news, that particular clock has started on this current song from Eric Church, “Springsteen“:

The first couple of times I heard it, I thought it was a pitch-corrected song by Willie Nelson. I even did the math in my head to figure out how old Willie Nelson would have been when Springsteen came out. Not 17, but young enough to be wistful for now that he’s almost eighty.

Hey, why not something wistful from Willie, then? “Mendocino County Line“, also from 2002 and featuring Lee Ann Womack:

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