Believing It Yourself. Faron Young. 1961. Capitol.

Are the dominant musical instruments—rhythm section and steel guitar—on this early nineteen sixties track a signal of withdrawal from or a commitment to reality? Believing It Yourself is pop simplicity perfect with a honky tonk-swing dynamism that charges it with dancefloor vigor. The intimacy of a country artist from honky tonk’s golden age connecting with his working class demographic strengthens the potency of the poetry’s muscle until it’s alive with an almost physical robustness that a few of us want to experience again and again. Typically, honky tonk music is made by and for physical laborers, and its relation to its listenership is one of human kinesis, its rhythms purposed specifically for dancing or sex. Only those bound inextricably to the demands of work, who know intimately the total sum of its exacting toll, can be said to know, through music, its most effective escape. If it’s through a sensory engagement with humanity that we’re first acquainted with the values of sympathy and empathy and, ultimately, love, then it’s little wonder our instincts lead us towards those darkened rooms where an artificial night welcomes us with whisky and an amplified jukebox. And the raging vectors of reality and fantasy dizzyingly clash overhead like colored lights.

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