Dumb Song That Ain't Even Really Country

I come from a backwater town in the hills of Tennessee
So poor we had no radios till 1983
Everybody bean pole thin starving families
Third world country in Bledsoe Tennessee

Went back there last Sunday to see what all had changed
Things just went from bad to worse since my life rearranged
Looked like the great depression
Made a comeback with a vengeance
Familes here wind up serving a desperate life sentence

I got away in time to save my ego still intact
But the time has made me jaded and I never would come back
It's something in the blood that fed the horror in my mind
When I left the best of what I was got left behind

Saw a little girl torn up dress walking by the road
She hopped up in my car when I stopped at the dead railroad
I said you want to hear the radio she said
Oh no mama says it's the devil
Same as TV, whiskey, money and books except the Bible

She was only in my car for three minutes thirteen seconds
That's how long my Marilyn Monroe song
Took to make an impression
The first few chords her eyes looked like a midnight ghost possession
By the second verse her hands were raised clear up to heaven

I watched her tears and laughter at the volume raised to ten
Like a hallelujah chorus that girl looked born again
Her house was at the end of that cross cut road
She was singing all the verses as she walked away unbowed

I'm headed back to Bledsoe with a Fender amp in back
Credit card is maxed out cords and picks in my rucksack
Up here on the front seat is the bestest gift of all
Lifetime loan that poor kid a brand new Gold Les Paul

Poor folks compensate by richness in the mind and heart
Starving folks build up where rich folks tear apart
Lives of desperation need hope to carry on
Hope wants folks to need to be a world phenomenon
That little girl's gonna be the world's best of all time