For this week’s blog, I’d like to look at a pretty stereotypically southern song, namely, I’m Southern by The Cadillac Three. I’m also southern so I feel like a particular expert on this song if you ignore that I was only a southerner from the ages of 0-9.
The song starts out a little differently than a typical country song, with more of a rock feel to it, kicking in with the singer’s heavy country drawl into the first verse which goes “Well, I’m the first one to say ladies first, last one at the bar with a thirst, yeah. Hard to hate and hard to love, that’s right. Open up a can of hell in a fight”. So he’s already more chivalrous than most country singers since ladies are put first in his mind, and he’s the last one to get drunk, aw that’s so sweet of him. Also, based on the title, I’m assuming this title will be about “southerners” and stereotypes about them, so he’s saying that people from the south are “hard to hate and hard to love”? I mean I’ve met plenty of southern people that are very hard to love but not many the other way around, but maybe that’s just me.
The second verse goes “Yeah, that’s whiskey and cigarettes on my breath, or better than an old Tom Petty cassette, and I don’t always make it on Sundays to Jesus, but I do good and hopes that he smiles when mean it. Cause I’m…”. So another stereotype is that southerners drink a lot of whiskey and smoke a lot, or at least enough that it was worth mentioning in basically its own verse.
The chorus is possibly my favorite part of this song because for one thing it’s really fun to sing and he’s just so emotional about it for no reason because this is all it is “Southern, and it ain’t my fault. My daddy came from Louisiana, like the hot sauce. Southern, and it ain’t my fault. Yeah, this is how we roll, baby, this is how we roll”. This is probably the most self-explanatory chorus that I’ve analyzed, he’s southern because his dad’s from Louisiana. It’s like how I’m southern because I’m from North Carolina, same energy y’all.
The third verse goes “Well, my family’s full of crazy Cajuns, from the looks of me, you’d say well it’s contagious, cause I can feel it running down through my blood, yeah and it feels like a boot and big tires to mud”. What he’s talking about at the end of this verse is getting a truck “stuck” which is when you drive a truck into a big thing of mud and try to get it out and it is such an inherently southern thing I’m surprised it took him until the third verse to mention it. Otherwise, the verse is basically just him talking about how the “south is coursing through his veins” essentially.
The fourth verse goes “If you don’t like me, that’s alright, you can kiss my ass and honey, I’ll get by now, cause, where I’m from that’s what we do, yeah. If you was born down here you’d probably do it too. Cause I’m…”. So this verse is about the typically “asshole” southern attitude regarding life and just other people and their opinions in general, and to be honest, I think it’s pretty true to real life for a singer to do.
The chorus plays again and then moves into the bridge which goes “I’m a take it or leave it kind of man, a bottle and a smoke and a light, sing along if you understand. If you don’t, draw a line in the sand, Cause I’m southern, yeah, ooh, yeah, I’m southern. Well, I’m…”. Essentially the same kind of message that we got in the previous verse, just “I’m rude because I’m southern and if you can’t accept it, screw you, but I’m still going to be bigoted and you have to accept it and if you can’t, screw you, because I’m entitled to my opinion”.
The chorus plays two more times and then the song ends. So this song wasn’t exactly an example of “bro-country” but it was an example of the disconnect that exists within our society, especially when looking at the last two verses and the commentary I made about those verses. We had neighbors that had Obama posters in their yard and they were set on fire and then thrown into a ditch, but if that happened with a Trump sign now, there would be a huge amount of outrage, and that’s the big message that I took away from this song.
Image 1 Source: https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/country/7965582/the-cadillac-three-legacy
Image 2 Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/k6fBjaeir3jMtmUNA
Country music has never been my strongest suit but being able to just read your interpretation of the lyrics really helped me understand the song a bit better. The whole song is really interesting when you look at it from the understanding that there is a divide between the north and the south. It is prevalent throughout the whole song that there is a significance in only being from the south and how they are much better.