Kenny Rogers' "Planet Texas" weds sci-fi w/ country!

Science fiction and country music would not seem to be a natural partnership. In 1989 we got "Planet Texas" which is a quite pleasing exhibit. Country music is a genre not exactly known for wanting to push its horizons or boundaries. "Planet Texas" does conform to the mold if you just consider the bad grammar. No reason why country music needs to be comfortable with that.
Country music tends to present Americans at an earthy level. Science fiction appeals to people with advanced degrees. Sci-fi challenges us to think outside the sweaty realm of our day to day reality. We create an alternate reality. We spin such stories based on what we think is possible outside of our standard environment. It's not random, or it shouldn't be, because existing science should be used as the basis for imagining what's possible. Space flight: how do we explain it?
Shall we assume that alien visitors would have hostile intent? BTW has any movie ever really given us the line: "These beings are of obviously superior intelligence."
George Pal gave us fascinating sci-fi stories on the big screen in the mid-20th Century. His "War of the Worlds" had a message about how Christian faith ought to be the foundation on which we could count on a safe future. By the 1960s that message would have been impractical for the cynical young generation.
 
Kenny Rogers delivers the tune
Shall we consider Kenny Rogers bold for attempting the unlikely marriage of sci-fi and country music? His is the voice we hear with the song "Planet Texas." A friend recently shared a link to the video with me. I was surprised to see such an elaborate video at a time, 1989, when I thought the art form hadn't advanced that far yet. I consider the early videos even with their rough edges, or maybe because of their rough edges, to be superior to what followed. How can you beat seeing Ed Koch sing "country boy at heart?" Hank Williams Jr. did some fine seminal videos. How can you beat "Don Juan de Bubba?"
Kenny Rogers' "Planet Texas" was released in May of 1989 as the second single from the album "Something Inside So Strong." The song reached No. 30 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles and Tracks chart. The opening line of lyrics refers to the aliens and hits us over the head with the bad grammar. "They rode like they was Rangers." So we have sci-fi unfolding with the language of ignoramuses. Do such lyrics reflect the true country music audience, or is it a contrived lingo presenting essentially a stereotype?
Do country music fans feel at ease listening to songs that suggest a rough-hewn anti-intellectualism? Is it just consistent with a dive bar motif? So, it is just put-on? I don't know, but as a songwriter myself I strive for proper grammar just because, well, it's proper. I'm not putting on airs or anything. And yet I feel my lyrics can be quite genuine and organic. Oh, I can latch onto a cliche when it comes to word choice, as demonstrated by my song about Kirby Puckett (on YouTube). A part of my song explains some of the trials of our Minnesota sports scene outside of baseball. I have the line: "The North Stars done left us for the Lone Star State." Hey, that's Texas!
"Done left us?" Was it Johnny Paycheck who mainly popularized "done left?" Is it a southern construction? Maybe I could argue that I just needed an extra syllable for that line. This sort of thing is done all the time, i.e. deviating from normal word choice just to get the needed number of syllables! Shhh, that's a trade secret, or maybe not.
 
"Tiny little" can pass muster
I'll present a line from the great Blood, Sweat and Tears song "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know." And the line is: "Or just a tiny little grain of sand." The problem is "tiny little" being a rather glaring redundancy. If you were to write such a line in a songwriting workshop, it'd be flagged. Silly rabbit, the "great ones" in songwriting do in fact break the rules sometimes. It has been said that the great ones exercise this license "but you can be sure they know what the rules are."

Kenny Rogers

"Planet Texas" paints this fantastical sci-fi picture while latching onto many of the symbols we associate with country, like horses and guns. It was as if Kenny Rogers self-consciously had to adhere to a lot of country music's themes while engaging in brainy science fiction. Which is a major reason I find the song so interesting. This is a song with staying power in one's memory.
"My gun was cocked and ready," Rogers sings. And then, "I seen they weren't just common buckaroos." Ah yes, "I seen." We learn the aliens had "shootin' irons" that "shot laser light." Their "spurs were anodized." Hey, I don't know what "anodized" means. The aliens had jeans that "was pressurized." Yes, "was." Weren't "pressurized jeans" what Starsky and Hutch wore? Rim shot.
Rogers sings "we were miles above the Earth." Then, an echo: "And, I mean miles above the Earth." Repetition can be a staple in songwriting. I have a song called "Twins Win in '65," a strophic song (one melodic idea) in which the last line of each stanza is repeated. I guess the idea is to apply emphasis. My "Twins Win in '65" pays homage to the 1965 Minnesota Twins baseball team, of course, a pennant winner, but I insert two stanzas which state a war protest message. We cannot celebrate the unbridled joy surrounding our '65 Twins without being reminded that 1965 was a horrible, pivotal year for escalation of the Viet Nam war. I don't have this song recorded yet.
There is a refrain in the Kenny Rogers song where he wails "yippie-aye-ay-e."
Rogers sings "there ain't no sight like a desert night looking down on Mexico." Keep in mind that he needed a rhyme with "Tokyo." Such are the parameters of songwriting.
 
Quite the interstellar tour
The aliens take the singer through the solar system. They pass by the moons of Mars and Jupiter. They go around Saturn's rings and "past the frozen plains of Pluto." They pick up the trail of a comet's tail. "Yippie-aye-ay-e" takes on a haunting quality. The trip didn't even pop the singer's ears, we learn. The singer becomes convinced that the visitors are "the good guys."
"Their cowboy hats was white." Yes, "was." The singer asks them where they came from. They say it's "the biggest place in outer space." It's "a planet known as Texas." "Yippie aye-ay-e."
Let's credit the songwriter: James Andrew Parks III. "The biggest place in outer space" is a nod, of course, to Texas' larger than life notoriety. What a pleasing song and video to consume if the grammatical issues don't bother you. I can overlook them. The best country music is just good music. "Country" connotes some things, even political, that cloud the issues.
We have seen country music gravitate to the conservatives and Republicans in recent years. I find it strange because it's the Democrats, as a legacy from FDR, who really seem to want to provide a secure foundation for the common man and poor people. Bill Anderson sings a song about this big poor family that is thankful for all they have, despite their horrible material shortcomings. A lot of country music seems to celebrate this thinking, but I have to wonder: wouldn't the beleaguered mother in that "po' " family love to get some benefit from government programs, the kind of benefits we depend on Democrats for? Women are instinctive nurturers. Men on the other hand start wars and generally like to destroy things. Just as if they had their "shootin' irons shooting out laser light" from the "Planet Texas" song.
I had the opportunity to hear Kenny Rogers in Nashville TN in the 1990s. It was a treat. The Nashville music community is golden. Someday I'd like to have one of my own songs recorded with a steel guitar! Or, maybe with three female background singers! Eureka, or "yippie-aye-ay-e!"
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com