Three Chords and the Truth: Storytelling Lessons from Country Music
Three chords and the truth.
That’s how songwriter Harlan Howard famously described country music. It’s a medium that often relies on simplicity in both musical and storytelling structure. And there are important lessons for corporate communicators to learn from this art form.
When talking about his documentary Country Music, filmmaker Ken Burns said, “country music is about universal human experiences of joy at birth and sadness at death and falling in love and trying to stay in love and losing love and being lonely and seeking redemption.”
In other words, great country music is about life.
Sure it’s easy to have a laugh at country music being all about lovin’ your mama and your pickup or crying when your dog died or your girlfriend left.
You need to look no further than these classic song titles: “She Got the Goldmine. I Got the Shaft,” “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” and “It’s All Wrong, but It’s Alright.”
And yet I can listen to Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” on repeat because it’s an entire novel distilled into a song lasting 3 minutes and 44 seconds. If you stayed awake in your high school English class, you’ll recall that there are six elements of plot. And “A Boy Name Sue” uses all of them:
Exposition
“My daddy left home when I was three”
Conflict
“But the meanest thing that my daddy ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me Sue”
Rising action
“But I made me a vow to the moon and stars
I'd search the honky tonks and bars
And kill that man that gave me that awful name”
Climax
"And I looked at him and my blood ran cold
And I said, 'My name is Sue, how do you do?
Now you gonna die,' that's what I told him”
Falling action
“Well, I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
I called him my pa, and he called me his son”
Resolution
And I think about him, now and then
Every time I try and every time I win,
And if I ever have a boy, I'll name him
Frank or George or Bill or Tom, anything but Sue”
There’s not just great storytelling in country music, there’s also poetry.
?Let me offer just a couple of examples, starting with the great Hank Williams Sr., the man Ken Burns called the “Hillbilly Shakespeare.” Read the words to “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and you can feel the agony of a betrayed lover.
Your cheatin' heart will make you weep
You'll cry and cry and try to sleep
But sleep won't come the whole night through
Your cheatin' heart will tell on you
?Or put “Mama Tried” on your playlist. A young, rough and ready Merle Haggard spent time in San Quentin Prison, and later used the experience to write one of the all-time classics.
I turned 21 in prison, doing life without parole
No one could steer me right but mama tried, mama tried
Mama tried to raise me better but her pleading, I denied
Leaving only me to blame 'cause mama tried
Even masters of the blues and jazz appreciated country music. Take Ray Charles’ masterpiece Modern Sounds of Country and Western Music as an example. Ray fought for this project with his record label. He grew up listening to country music, and as a singer, he loved the lyrics. Charlie Parker – the bebop great – would often play country records on jukeboxes. When fellow jazz players asked why, he told them to listen to the stories.
As writers, we should be listening for the stories. Then figure how to write it effectively using all the classic elements of storytelling in a succinct manner. And don’t forget – all you really need are three chords and the truth.