Video Review – Wade Bowen’s “Songs About Trucks”
“Songs About Trucks” performed by Wade Bowen and written by hot songwriting commodities Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally has become one of 2013’s big anti-hits with its off message take on truck songs and their daisy chains of clichés. Usually accompanying these odes to idiocracy are modern country music videos complete with hot rods, hot girls, and jacked up trucks burning brodies in churned up mud, hurdling themselves headlong toward the cause of finding a new frontier for image-driven misogynistic consumerism and sheer indolency. So it is only appropriate that Bowen’s anti-hit should be accompanied by an anti-video.
Shot and produced by James Weems and Glen Rose, the “Songs About Trucks” video co-stars filmmaker Blake Judd of JuddFilms as an overzealous Nashville videographer looking to turn a timid Wade Bowen into an oversexed country star, fitting him with designer duds, dapping makeup on his face as he squints and pouts, while bikini-clad coeds cool down in the water getting ready for their juggy cameos. Eventually Bowen slunks off the set to sit in a bar with a lone cameraman, telling his story in a simple manner.
Read: Wade Bowen Takes Truck Songs To Task
Just as some have pointed out that songwriter Shane McAnally has had a hand in some of the recent “bro country” songs that “Songs About Trucks” looks to lampoon, filmmaker Blake Judd also has been behind the camera for some “titties and tailgates” shoots, including the Bucky Covington / Shooter Jennings collaboration “Drinking Side of Country” and the Jawga Boyz / Joe Diffie mashup “Girl Ridin’ Shotgun.” It may have been cool if the “Songs About Trucks” video took the sensationalism to the next level, with legions of buxom chicks dancing and an army of mud-caked trucks, but Bowen probably doesn’t have the budget the big boys do. Nonetheless, this video does a good job illustrating what is at the heart of the message of “Songs About Trucks” and Wade Bowen as an artist, which is an honest portrayal of a man who just wants to be seen as one of us, instead of an entertainer on a pedestal.
1 ¾ of 2 guns up. 4 of 5 stars
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Songs About Trucks, Wade Bowen, Wade Bowen Videos
November 4, 2013 @ 2:59 pm
Glad you liked it and thanks for the quick review. I’ve only gotten to watch the video once, but I smiled all the way through it. I’ve seen Wade in concert many times, met him, and have all of his albums. This video is spot-on, in my opinion–I hope it gets a lot of play, although I doubt it will.
November 4, 2013 @ 3:10 pm
I’ve been waiting for a video along these lines for awhile now with all the cold beer in a field on a tailgate songs out there they are ripe to be parodied.
An example of this is the video for ‘What They Do’ by the progressive hip hop group The Roots from 1997. The Roots were a great group that used real instrumentation in many of their songs and were far more deep than most rap groups.
They made this video with the subtitles by the way. Would love to see something along these lines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmTPM4aUDW8
November 4, 2013 @ 6:58 pm
Good call on the Roots video. Haven’t seen that in a long time.
November 4, 2013 @ 3:41 pm
That was cute. 😀 I hope it gives the song more exposure…
November 4, 2013 @ 3:47 pm
Pretty good stuff. Wade always coes off to me as a genuine dude.
November 5, 2013 @ 12:04 am
Beautifully written song.
The key challenge with protest songs about Nashvilleis in conveying the discontent without coming off as bitter. “Songs About Trucks” passes that test with flying colors. The best aspects of this song are how it expresses a sense of disappointment rather than anger and in how it uses soft righteousness to contrast truck songs with the true essence of country music: songs about heartbreak.
November 5, 2013 @ 8:05 am
Well put Eric.
The songs the come out and bash pop country with “fuck Nashville this way and that” get as old as songs about trucks. This approach is fantastic. Radio can accept this and play it, and feel good about playing it.
And…in the end, this is song gets to one of the true roots of country… a broken hearted guy drinking beer (who probably drove to the bar in a truck).
November 5, 2013 @ 2:55 pm
I can see why the video was done the way it turned out because not only have we been hearing these Hip-Hop in the Sticks songs but seeing the videos to further push these idiotic songs. But honestly, this video kinda sold me short and was honestly hoping for more. To give an example: I think there should’ve been a deeper emphasis on the bar scenes.
November 5, 2013 @ 4:22 pm
This is just a minor thing, but I was curious why they zoomed into the label, it said “boundaries” I assumed it was some fancy designer jeans, but when I googled it looked like it was “no boundaries” which is made by Wal Mart; and then it said size 15, which I assume is a woman’t size.
Anyway just curious
November 5, 2013 @ 9:25 pm
yep, them’s me
November 6, 2013 @ 11:00 am
i was thinking that it was just showing that the jeans were womens jeans.
November 5, 2013 @ 6:01 pm
Luke Bryan’s “That’s My Kind of Night” video is the most horrific truck video ever made. You’ve got a country guy in the middle of a corn field. He’s standing on top of some kind of truck bed that’s a combination sound system, flashing disco lights and a stripper stage.
Never before has the great country music icon know as the “Pickup Truck” been taken to such low depths. The once proud symbol of hard working and tough men has been degraded all the way down into being a cheesy stripper stage. The truck isn’t even graced by a hot young stripper. Instead Luke Bryan, his complete lack of any muscle definition,baggy tired 37 year old eyes and what many argue is in fact a vagina, shakes it.
How does the man look at himself in the mirror?
November 5, 2013 @ 6:57 pm
I know, and there is not one iota of self awareness in that whole video. He thinks it’s cool, when in reality it’s laughable for al the reasons you mentioned.
If Zac Brown or Toby Keith wants to really ram home a point they should make a video that mocks this entire pathetic genre. The power of mockery is immense.