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Interstate 880. I was heading south on 880 in Northern California, driving from Oakland down toward San Jose.
That's when I first heard it.
Early evening, sunset, perhaps.
I might have been passing right by Oracle Arena where the Golden State Warriors used to play and Oakland Coliseum where the Oakland A's used to play right when the song started.
But that detail is a little too specific, too florid, too romantic.
That part's probably made up.
I probably made up the sunset too, obviously.
But 880, I remember.
I'm heading south on 880 from Oakland towards San Jose and I I got the radio on.
I got country radio on.
He said I was in my early 40s With a lot of life before me When a moment came that stopped me on the dime Here we have country music superstar Tim McGraw singing a song he released in 2004.
And myself, I'm in my mid -20s here in 2004 when I first hear Tim McGraw sing the words, I was in my early 40s with a lot of life before me.
And so unavoidably, I first hear these lines through the foggy arrogance of relative youth.
See, Tim, I've got even more of my life before me.
And as for the life I've lived already, I'm proud to say that I haven't spent much of that time taking country music that seriously.
I do not yet take country music terribly seriously.
I'm getting into country, finally, but I'm still putting getting into country in scare quotes.
I'm listening to country music in a tentative, arm's length, faux intellectual, almost smug sort of way.
Like I'm doing country music a favor.
survivor I'm like yeah okay maybe these Brooks and Dunn guys are cool but they're not as cool as like Arcade Fire you know I've still got a snotty alt -rock teenager turned indie rock adult mentality and I am learning to love country songs the same way I love indie rock songs but any country song that permeates my semi -consciousness still has to pass through through a thin but tangible irony barrier.
First, I almost gotta like the country song as a joke.
Okay? And so, as I rumble down 880, I roll my eyes, perhaps, right here, when Tim puts a little extra schmaltz on the line talking about sweet time.
But I miss the blunt, the shattering, the masterfully plain -spoken total lack of schmaltz Tim puts on the line talking about the options.
I spent most of the next days looking at the x -rays talking about the options and talking about sweet time.
Yeah, I've been listening to this new -to -me country song for just 45 seconds, but I'm already super locked in.
I am listening hard. I have alarmed myself With how hard I am listening.
And so subconsciously, I'm already trying to convince myself that Tim McGraw lacks the fundamental artistry and sophistication of like Wilco or Joanna Newsom.
But consciously already, it ain't working.
Truth is, I've already fully bought into Tim McGraw's artistry and sophistication.
If you want the truth, the loaded and poignant and terrible word x -rays was the moment where I fully bought in.
We ain't even hit the pre -chorus yet, and I'm already fully emotionally invested.
and for a split second i cling to the man what you do right there the smug indie rockin foggy arrogance of relative youth part of my brain tries to seize on the cheeseball barroom conversational tone of this song the song unambiguously about a guy who has a huge health scare and it turbo charges his will to live as a way of diminishing of disqualifying this song from true greatness But then the chorus hits.
And yeah, my attempt to convince myself that I only dig this song ironically, this ain't going to work.
It turns out Tim McGraw sincerely kicks ass.
I went skydiving. I went Rocky Mountain climbing.
I went 2 .7 seconds on a full name blue mansion.
okay is this phrase a rocky mountain climbing a bit cheeseball sure is the doodly super macho man specificity of i went 2 .7 seconds on a bull named fu manchu a bit cheeseball absolutely this may shock you but i myself don't have much rodeo experience though i'm guessing 2 .7 seconds is not Not a very long time to last, even on a bull named Fu Manchu.
Given that I'm in my mid -20s and therefore in peak physical condition, I'm guessing that I myself could have lasted at least like 4 .5 seconds on Fu Manchu.
I'm just saying, is this whole chorus and really this whole song a bit cheeseball in its unabashed sentimentality and grandiosity and commitment to ferocious beer commercial type uplift?
lift? Sure. But also this chord change right here, my friends, it's coming and you are not prepared.
The first chord change here, the minor fall implied by this major lift, the glorious ascent here from G to B7, right on the words, spoke sweeter.
This is the moment.
This is the final heroic Rocky Mountain climb and push to the summit of true greatness.
This is some legit it.
One small melodic step for man, one giant leap for mankind shit.
All four of my tires lifted off the road on the words spoke sweeter.
and i love deeper and i spoke sweeter and i gave forgiveness i've been denying that is an apex mountain chord change my friends and i brought love deeper and i my bold spoke sweeter, astounding, that's a G to a B7, I looked it up, I don't want to oversell my elitism, my smug mid -20s antipathy toward country music, let's not overdo the self -deprecation here, though I do wonder why I'm listening to country radio right this second.
The likely answer is that KMEL was doing commercials, KMEL, the beloved, my beloved Bay Area rap station, 106 .1 km el that's my eternal jam right that's my first choice in the car the whole time i lived in oakland in the mid -2000s so i can hear e40 kik to sneak mac dray the federation another time i love km el and if km el is doing commercials i got a solid second choice radio wise i jumped a live 105 the alt rock station 105 .3 so i can hear what franz ferdinand or the yeah yeah yeahs or whatever So yeah, dollars to donuts.
I am listening to Tim McGraw on the radio right now because KMEL was doing commercials.
So I flipped to live 105, which was also doing commercials.
So I started flipping around and I hit on, I'm guessing the country station KRTY 95 .3 out of San Jose.
Jose. Actually, if we do want to crank up the self -deprecation and oversell my elitism toward country music, we could say that my driving south on 880 from Oakland towards San Jose is relevant here because in my mid -20s brain, and also this is basically true objectively, but mostly it's in my mid -20s brain, Oakland is cool, but south of Oakland is less cool broadly.
Yeah? You know what's south of Oakland, Fremont, the city of Fremont.
You know what Fremont is?
Fremont is the city they're always threatening to move my beloved Oakland A's to.
They're constantly threatening to build a new A's stadium in Fremont, and I hold that against Fremont.
I take that threat personally, and I take it out on Fremont.
You know where the A's play now?
Sacramento. You You know what's actually in Fremont?
The chain restaurants.
As a mid -20s Oakland resident, I moved there from Ohio.
Mind you, I am absolutely a dimwit transplant.
I don't know shit about shit about California, not to be self -deprecating.
As a proud, super knowledgeable Oakland resident, all I know about Fremont is that's where the chain restaurants are.
Your Olive Gardens and Red Lobsters.
Fremont's where I take my girl to get all -you -can -eat shrimp at Red Lobster, and it's a two -hour wait on a Friday night.
And I'm just sitting in the parking lot being all elitist, like, these people live in the culinary mecca of Northern California, and they're waiting to eat at Red Lobster?
As though I am not waiting alongside them.
As though I, too, will not be scarfing down all -you -can -eat shrimp in two hours.
This is the enlightened attitude I brought to country music at the time.
What's with all these unsophisticated people enjoying this thing I would very much like to also enjoy?
I don't mean to complain about radio stations doing commercials, by the way.
I genuinely dig the rhythm of that, the way the commercials only build anticipation for when the music comes back.
I've come to appreciate ad breaks as a fine art.
Let me give you an example.
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile.
Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back.
So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills.
But it turns out that's very illegal.
So there goes my big idea for the commercial.
Give it a try at mintmobile .com.
And that's how it's done.
Exceptional ad break right there, if I do say so myself.
Simple, elegant, classic.
But so if we want to really oversell my antipathy toward country music, we could say that I'm listening to country radio right this second because I'm driving south on 880 from oakland towards san jose and i am using country music to smugly acquire a less cool south of oakland mindset i am putting myself in a fremont mood but that's overstating things that is excessively rude to both me and fremont also this tim mcgraw song is called live like you were dying and he said someday i hope you get the chance to live like you were dying and this is a genuinely beautiful startling arresting song live
like you were dying uh this song was written by tim nichols and craig wiseman and it appears on tim mcgraw's eighth studio album released in 2004 and called Live Like You Were Dying.
This is a genuinely beautiful, startling, arresting song.
But lyrically speaking, I am not accustomed to being spoken to so candidly.
The phrase Live Like You Were Dying strikes me on first contact as alarmingly direct.
I am alarmed at the sincerity and the straightforwardness here.
And as a defense mechanism, I dismiss that sincerity and straightforwardness by describing it as cheeseball.
I am a snotty alt -rock teenager turned indie rock adult, and I am accustomed to lyrical sentiments that are more abstract, cryptic, guarded, irony -laced, or perhaps even irony -poisoned.
Though maybe it's my personal irony that poisons the song.
Maybe some of those indie rock songs I loved were more direct, than I was willing to admit.
So, okay. Another mid -2000s song that hit me incredibly hard on first listen.
You know, the great American indie rock band, Silver Jews out of Hoboken, New Jersey, led by the poet and Oracle and American hero, David Berman, the guy who once started a song with the line, in 1984, I was hospitalized for approaching perfection.
That guy in 2005 2005, on first listen, I became completely enraptured by a new SilverJews song that starts like this.
This is from the 2005 SilverJews album, Tanglewood Numbers.
And the personal details of my first listen here are way less interesting, even to me.
I was on the computer.
But you can imagine my delight at a song with the opening lines, Fast cars, fine ass, these things will pass and it won't get more profound.
There's me chortling at my computer.
There's me in my mid -20s, in peak physical condition, enjoying this witty, silly, frivolous little tune with no emotional stakes and no long -term philosophical implications for me whatsoever.
No, sir. Also, this Silver Juice song is called How Can I Love You If You Won't Lie Down?
and what a delightful song title that is that's a classic silly frivolous country music song title if you want the truth how can i love you if you won't lie down that's a she got the gold mine i got the shaft type classic country song title i gave her the ring and she gave me the finger etc and it just blew right by you didn't it maybe it didn't probably it didn't but at first it blew right by me.
The line before that, time is a game, only children play well.
What an incredible series of words that is.
How true, how direct, how heartbreaking, how freighted with dire, long -term philosophical implications for me personally.
This is the sort of music I prefer in the mid -2000s, in my mid -20s.
Songs with just enough cleverness and misdirection that I can overlook the often in retrospect very obvious and direct and devastating lyrical messages contained therein.
Tim McGraw ain't doing that.
Tim McGraw will not supply a fast cars, fine ass, these things will pass to disguise or at least soften the spiritual blow of time is a game only children play well.
No, in the second verse of Live Like You Were Dying, Tim simply continues continues to earnestly list things you might do when you realize you don't have an infinite amount of time on Earth in which to do things.
That's such a phenomenally nimble delivery by Tim McGraw of such a phenomenally freighted rhyme right there.
I was finally the husband that most of the time I wasn't.
Every person who's ever heard this song will imagine something different there in terms of what being the husband that most of the time I wasn't implies, what actions or inactions that line implies, and everyone will be right.
Whatever you think Tim McGraw means by that, that's what he means.
Live Like You Were Dying was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2005 Grammys, one of the big four Grammys categories song of the year is the songwriting award the best written song whereas record of the year is the song with the best performance generally the grammys will bestow major category recognition onto one country song per year if that they will graciously honor your lady antebellums and rascal flatses and so forth one at a time faith hill and leanne womack were both nominated for Song of the Year in 2001, though.
That's nice. So Live Like You Were Dying is a substantial and pretty rare crossover success, prestige -wise.
It didn't win Song of the Year, though.
Would you like to hear the five nominees for Song of the Year, the 2005 Grammys?
Live Like You Were Dying.
If I Ain't Got You by Alicia Keys.
Excellent. Jesus Walks by Kanye West. This is the Grammys year when Kanye lost lost Best New Artist to Maroon 5 and Kanye's debut album, the College Dropout Lost album of the year to Genius Loves Company, a late period Ray Charles duets album.
Look, Ray Charles is Ray Charles, but the Grammys are the Grammys.
That's all I'm saying.
Sorry, Tim McGraw, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, also nominated for Song of the Year.
Hoobastank. The Reason.
Wow. Yes. wow excellent wow and the winner of the 2005 grammy for song of the year daughters by john mayer oh well speaking of phenomenally nimble rhymes i also love the way tim mcgraw rhymes going fishing with imposition and all of a sudden going fishing wasn't such an imposition and i went three times that year i lost my chance you know who would have loved this song you know who maybe probably did love this song and i just never got around to asking him about it in april just a couple months back now uh we We lost my father -in -law, Jim.
He'd been sick for a long time with a lot of close calls and hospital chaos, etc. So there was some peace, some sense of relief when he passed.
Or maybe I just say that.
Jim loved country music.
Jim loved a lot of things and a lot of people, and a lot of people loved him.
Jim loved squirrels also.
also, are, no, maybe he hated squirrels, but he definitely loved hating squirrels.
See, I was thinking recently about the very first time I met Jim, which remains one of my all -time favorite introductions to anyone ever.
I met Jim at his house, in the living room of the house he'd lived in forever, the house my future wife had grown up in, in Columbus, Ohio.
And there's a whole cliched script for this specific encounter, the meeting your girlfriend's dad encounter.
Now, my role in this script, meeting the dad and introducing myself to the dad as his daughter's new boyfriend, my role is to project non -threatening, likable purity of intentions.
My job is to put my girlfriend's dad at ease and make him like me and trust me.
I'm there, had in hand, radiating, outcast, Ms. Jackson, me and your daughter got a special thing going on energy.
Ideally, only that one part of one outcast song though.
Whereas Jim's role in this encounter is to be the scary macho dad.
He's supposed to answer the door holding a shotgun.
He's supposed to try to scare the hell out of me.
You know the scene in Bad Boys 2?
I bet Jim loved that movie.
The scene in Bad Boys 2 where Will Smith and Martin Lawrence just shout jovial, profane buddy cop movie abuse and point a gun at the poor kid who shows up at the door to take Martin Lawrence's daughter out on a date.
The whole scene shot behind the poor kid's head with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence on either side of him.
Russell, that kid's name was, I believe.
Classic scene. That's the malevolent, overprotective energy Jim is supposed to be radiating.
distrust and exasperation and the omnipresent threat of violence at the very least he's supposed to try to crush my hand when he shakes it as a sign of dominance like he goes hello son nice to meet you and he's got my hand in a death grip and i'm supposed to just smile and radiate likability but also secretly fight back and try to crush his hand like yes hello sir it's great to meet you too.
Oh yeah. And we're just locked there forever in a handshake crush off.
And eventually my girlfriend and her mom will walk in the room and Jim and I will both be standing there violently shaking hands like, that's not what happened when I met Jim though.
None of that happened.
What happened? What I remember first is Jim just sitting in a comfy chair in his living This beautifully furnished and serene living room.
Lots of natural light, lots of plants, lots of family photos, lots of warmth and peace and comfort and satisfaction.
I'd never met a man more sublimely in his element than Jim in this moment.
Like the way a James Bond movie introduces you to the newest James Bond villain in his shark -infested secret lair or whatever.
But it was the exact emotional opposite of that.
Not like Jim's the king of his castle or anything so macho, just that he's entirely at ease, completely at one with his environment.
He's just a guy who has formed an eternal, tranquil bond with his house.
and we shake hands normally jim and i and we exchange pleasantries for like 30 seconds i'm like yes hello sir it's great to meet you blah blah and then he goes i've been fighting with the squirrels in my backyard and i go what and jim proceeds to explain to me as we move to the window and we look out on his lush and serene and well -manicured backyard jim explains to me that that the squirrels are messing with his plants and his bird feeders and whatnot.
And he's pissed and he's exploring different ways to combat this threat, these squirrels.
And Jim goes, yeah, when you're at war with somebody, you sneak behind enemy lines and you physically sneak up behind your enemy and you just touch them on the shoulder.
And then you sneak away.
That's all you do. You tap them on the shoulder and maybe they don't even notice, but this establishes dominance and demoralizes your enemy.
I did that to the squirrels, but because they're squirrels, I just pulled on their tails.
And I go, you snuck up behind a squirrel and pulled its tail.
And he goes, yes. And I go, oh, wow, this guy rules.
That was Jim. Jim, who a couple of years ago in the midst of a totally unrelated conversation, he told everyone that one time he gave a bird mouth to mouth and the bird recovered and they're bros now.
And the whole family's like, what?
And Jim explains how he found a canary, I think, with its head stuck in the hole of the bird feeder.
And Jim carefully freed the bird, which then did not appear to be breathing, et cetera.
And so Jim like held the bird in his hand and administered like one finger chest compressions and also gave the bird mouth to mouth.
there is some debate as to the specifics here, the bird CPR logistics.
Mary Jo, my mother -in -law and Jim's wife of 55 years, Mary Jo contends that Jim would not have physically put his mouth on the bird's beak.
Perhaps Jim put his mouth near the bird's mouth and blew a concentrated column of air at the bird. The point is Jim does bird CPR and the bird seems to recover somewhat what.
And Jim leaves the bird there.
And the next morning the bird's gone.
But then later that year, the bird returns to visit Jim.
Now they're friends.
Now they have a permanent spiritual bond.
And he tells us this several months after it happened.
That was Jim who played wordle with my kids every night over the phone these last few years when he couldn't leave the house as much. After Jim's funeral at the cemetery, they had a quick ceremony with a military salute.
Jim had served during the Vietnam War, half a dozen guys with rifles.
And my four -year -old daughter is not psyched about the guns, about how loud the gunshots will be.
So she won't go near the guns.
And therefore, I can't go near the ceremony.
Instead, my daughter and I were lurking way out on the sidewalk and my daughter makes me keep my hands clamped over her ears the whole time including the 10 minutes or so before the dudes even fire their rifles and because my daughter is only four years old she doesn't really understand that her grandpa her Zsa Zsa that's the polish name for grandpa that's what we called him Zsa Zsa she doesn't really get that he's gone on?
We keep gently telling her and she keeps blissfully not quite getting it because of course she doesn't and we don't push it.
And now I'm standing there on the day of Jim's funeral, watching this final ceremony unfold in the distance with my hands covering my daughter's ears.
And I'm thinking about how weird it is that she doesn't quite get it, that we're here on this momentous and life -changing and terribly sad day, but she's too young to truly grasp the momentousness, the profound terrible sadness, the true lasting meaning of this day, because she's not old enough yet.
Time is a game only children play well, but it only occurs to me now that I'm still not old enough to truly grasp it either.
Bridge. It's a great bridge.
Live Like You Were Dying intensifies.
It escalates in this incredibly confident and unembarrassed manner.
Tim McGraw struck me immediately as a singer who is not afraid to tell you how he feels with no cleverness, no barrier, no artifice.
And in my mid -20s, I am not used to singers like this.
though it occurs to me now that maybe the cleverness, the barrier, the artifice, that was all me.
Back then, that's just the way I chose to hear most of what I heard. And this song was simply so unambiguous and so unashamed that I couldn't project any pointless, clever misdirection onto it.
Jim would have fully vibed with this song immediately.
I should have played it for him.
I I should have made Jim a mixtape.
I actively regret not doing that.
That's a weird, that's an almost superficial regret, I suppose.
But it's simply that I love the song and I love him.
Key change. if you didn't already feel like you'd personally scaled the rocky mountains the key change will carry you all the way up so the day i wrote a lot of this that night i was helping get my daughter to bed and we were reading adora the explorer book where everybody wishes on a star.
And the book asks, what do you wish for?
And my daughter says, I wish Zsa Zsa was here.
So I may in fact be underestimating her grasp of this situation in addition to overestimating my grasp of this situation.
Me too, kid. I feel like Jim would want me to include the part during the triumphant final chorus where tim mcgraw watches the eagle fly my name is rob arvella this is the 26th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s colon the 2000s It was about Tim McGraw's Live Like You Were Dying.
And if it's okay with you, I think I'd like to leave it at that.
Do me a favor, though, and go tell someone you love about a song you love.
That's our show for this week.
I figured we would do without the interview, if that's all right.
But thanks very much to our producers, as always, Olivia Creary, Christopher Sutton, and Justin Sales.
And thanks very much to you for listening.
And now, yeah, let's all go listen to Live Like You Were Dying by Tim McGraw.
See you next week.
