An inordinate amount of fight music's been popping up in the inbox lately. Being the resident pepidemiologist of the blogosphere, we categorize, analyze, and then evaluate them based on the logical system of analysis we've created over the past two years of our studies.
Then, of course, we mock them 'till they bleed like Jerry Cooney on blood-thinners.
Kick the stuffin' out of 'em--in an amiable country music kinda way. We're old enough to remember when country could in its own way generate a legitimate air of menace, even when a song sounded cheerful on first listen. "Fightin' Side Of Me" by Merle Haggard? "Country Boys Can Survive" by Hank Williams, Jr? Or, most notoriously in our mind, "Copperhead Road" by Steve Earle, a song that makes us want to set fire to the nearest flammable object not attached to our body? They all have the glower of a dude in tight jeans skunked on gallons of beer ready to put a knockoff Tony Lama in your canines, or at least thankin' about doin' just that.
Totally wants to kick the shit out of you while wearing a silly railroad hat.
Unfortunately, country music is run by total, unremitting pussies, which is why you get Faith Hill instead of Loretta Lynn and Tim McGraw instead of Merle Haggard.
Merle, who's actually been to jail for--oh god this is good--getting drunk with three guys, robbing a restaurant, and then getting caught because they were too shithoused to flee the scene properly. (If that ain't country, you can kiss our ass and David Allen Coe's.) Even burly manheap Toby Keith admits to trimming his pubes--can you see a proper country scoundrel like Willie Nelson doing this? Did you just see that very image in your head? Go lie down for a while, or drive your office stapler through your temple to dull the pain, then.
Anyway, Alabama fan Tony Martin was and presumably is a very, very optimistic man, since he wrote "Back on Top" two years ago in the gloaming of the Mike Shula era. Click here to listen to it, because it's the most genteel WOOOO US song we've ever heard. It's almost as genteel as Mike Shula himself, a man so savage he once ordered the spicy fries from Checkers to prove it.*
And we're gonna be great--
Wait and seeeee...
We're gonna kick the stuffing
Out of Auburn and Tennessee!!!
...and then Alabama went 1-3 against the pair, with only the 31-3 thrashing of Florida at Bryant-Denny to claim in the meantime for substantial wins. See? We mentioned that, because we're fair and have a long memory, and also because we're holding back the tears by dabbing them with the pages of this commemorative National Championship Sports Illustrated. Just don't tell that to Demeco Ryans--we still check the closets for him at night.
The point should be that under no circumstances should Tony Martin be allowed to write a pro-Alabama song ever again given this empirical evidence of its effectiveness. To be fair, he should write an anti-Alabama song just to see if the opposite happens. The song is so gentle, it made us grow breasts listening to it. (Thanks! Whee!) It made us thank our foremothers for their hard sacrifices under unjust patriarchies. It made Colin Firth seem rugged and sensitive simultaneously; it made us consider taking calcium and potassium supplements for our health. It made us cry for all the beauty we don't appreciate in this life. It made us, in short, realize how much of a woman we really could be.
It sounds precisely like the Shula years for Alabama fans, in other words. Saban, on the other hand, should have Alabama fans yearning for red meat, wenches, ill-fitting khakis, and all other things that are man. Like Dethklok, but with red and white pom-poms.
*Sadly, Shula had to back off the devilish spuds after two and give them to Joe Kines, who covered them with thumbtacks and cayenne, downed them, and washed them down with a vial of whiskey and pepper spray. If you don't love Joe Kines you want the terrorists to win.