Prophets still exist in the modern age

You can occasionally find evidence of them in your car radio

In January 1989, Randy Travis released the third single from the 1988 album Old 8x10, Is It Still Over?

The track would be the ninth single Travis released to that point and became his seventh consecutive number 1 record.

Randy was, shall we say, hitting the ball hard in those days.

Of the four singles on Old 8x10, three of them hit the top spot on the charts. Deeper Than the Holler, written by country songsmiths Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz is perhaps the most well-known of these songs—one that rattles off metaphor after metaphor of a man’s love for his woman. Pure country.

Is It Still Over? was co-written by Ken Bell and Larry Henley. Henley was striping the ball in this era as well, having penned with co-writer Jeff Silbar, the schmaltz-laden Bette Midler track Wind Beneath My Wings, originally intended for Australian country singer Kamahl on a 1982 album, but never released.

In the early 1980s, Roger Whitaker was the first to release the song, and soon Wind was recorded by Sheena Easton, Lee Greenwood, Lou Rawls, Gladys Knight & the Pips, amongst others. Rawls and Knight both charted with their versions.

Midler’s version came off the soundtrack of the film Beaches of which she also starred in. Recorded in 1988, it was released in February 1989 and became a hit, named “Record of the Year” and winning “Song of the Year” at the 1990 Grammys.

Henley was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012. Notably, Henley performed as part of the Newbeats, an American pop group formed in 1964. The Newbeats charted in the top 20 three times, with their most notable hit—with Henley singing his signature falsetto—1964’s Bread and Butter.

The song lives on as a jingle in advertisements to this day.

Interesting history, but not at all what I had in mind to talk about.

Occasionally, uncomplicated, formulaic country songs can prove quite prophetic.

I was rereading a part of the courageous book Steve Deace and Todd Erzen put out early last year called Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History.

I bought it last April, and now it is on deep discount at Amazon. Well worth reading, especially for $1.38.

Their subtitle can be argued, but there is no doubt that Fauci is amongst the most powerful and evil men ever to be involved in American government. That list is well-populated, however, so putting Fauci at the top of the list is a bold claim. The authors make a strong argument and recency bias favors them as well.

So, rereading the book, it got me thinking of that Randy Travis song. I’m wondering here, in my office, if “covid” is over. Will it ever be over? Is it still over?

We don’t have to wear masks anymore in most places. An evil grocery store in my neighborhood even put up sign assuring folks of any vaccination status that they would not be discriminated against while shopping and that masks were not a requirement for entry.

I am not counting on that as a perpetual standard. They were pretty cowardly for close to two years when it came to all of it.

That lie that I tried to slip by you was told with good intentions

It was just another way to say I love you and protect you from the truth

And half a pound of cure is surely worth a half an ounce of good prevention

And trying to explain while I’m insane is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do

Now, Bell and Henley wrote these words in the late-1980s, and the song was about a sappy man whining about his lost love. Travis somehow pulls it off in a quite manly way, the emotion more angsty than whiny as the lyrics themselves would portend.

Did the songwriters ever predict “covid” hitting our world. Did they have in mind an evil garden gnome-looking creature like Anthony Fauci trying to slip lies by us with “good intentions” in order to “protect us from the truth?”

Did they have in mind that our government would “say I love you and protect you from the truth” by foisting a dubious shot (“half a pound of cure”) upon us when a “half an ounce of good prevention” in the form of perhaps some Vitamin C or some exercise would have done us just fine?

Certainly not.

The Nashville songwriting mills are notorious for churning out treacly nonsense that hits the airwaves, makes a splash on the charts, and then becomes forgotten in no time.

Some hits stick around. Is It Still Over? is one of those hits. Frankly, SiriusXM Radio channel 58 plays these hit country songs again and again. It might be my favorite channel.

Pay attention to the songs you hear on SiriusXM 58. Understand that these songwriters, even when writing double- and triple-entendres into their songs, could very well be prophets of a coming age.

I get many of the objections to country music, but I don’t get a single objection to Randy Travis. Well, the one about 10 years ago where he was naked and intoxicated trying to rob the Tiger Mart of cigarettes, that’s actually a big objection.

But the music, the singing, it is a magical voice.

Perhaps my favorite all-time Travis song is a duet with “The Possum,” George Jones, A Few Old Country Boys.

Both men’s voices are (or were) national treasures.

Of their personal lives: largely disasters. Indeed.

But that’s country music for you.

These men are prophets.

Brian O’Leary