Dierks Bentley – “Heart of a Lonely Girl”
1. Dierks Bentley has always included a bluegrass track at the end of each record, showing respect to the music that first hooked him when he got to Nashville. He blew this out into a full-on record with his last outing Up On The Ridge (we covered a track here), but the results were varied. Bentley’s best music has a crackling energy, and a pure bluegrass effort lost much of that. Luckily, with “Heart of a Lonely Girl” from his latest record Home, Charlie Worsham and Travis Howard deliver a tune that combines the bluegrass influence with Bentley’s rambling man archetype to drive a winning result.
2. Worsham gained some fame opening for Taylor Swift on her last tour, and is known as a talented multi-instrumentalist with an EP to his name. Travis Howard was on the same season of Nashville Star as Miranda Lambert, and has written a few hits for her (including “Heart Like Mine”). Their song begins with a common country theme — the road warrior pitted against the girl back home. Bentley’s character is self-aware that his traveling is the problem, almost to the point of accepting her departure before it happens. He knows that the other men circle like vultures, and can’t seem to blame her if she strays. The narrator walks a curious line between a desire to get back home and a recognition of who he is, right down to his roots.
3. The song rides great production from Jon Randall and Luke Wooten, but hardly needs it with its winning, near-Celtic lilt and accented rhythm. Country music is all about the tension in relationships, and the traveling musician/salesman/trucker theme comes up a lot. Howard and Worsham give it a fresh take with the shrugging narrator and the expert use (and invention?) of the word “hurtinest”. Lucky for them, the song got in the right hands, and lucky for us that we get to enjoy it.
lyrics:
Twenty seven days I’ve been out on the road,
I’m a nervous wreck, I gotta get back home.
There’s a young bride waiting for me all alone
Lord, how she misses me.
I can see her sittin’ in the kitchen chair
In a cotton dress with her long black hair.
But a woman ain’t pretty if a man ain’t there,
That I can’t afford to be.
It’s a shame, it’s a shame
She won’t be the one to blame
Oh the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.
Like a red-tail fox to a blue tick hound,
She’s the hottest thing for miles around.
All them other boys in our hometown,
Got tricks hid up their sleeves.
Now it ain’t her that I don’t trust,
She’s pretty and pure as diamond dust.
But lonesome is this lonesome girl
She can’t help for what she needs.
It’s a shame, it’s a shame
She won’t be the one to blame
Oh the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.
The heart of a lonely girl,
The heart of a lonely girl.
It’s the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
The heart of a lonely girl.
Daddy was a rambler just like me,
I guess the apple don’t fall too far from the tree.
When I ask why momma had to go that day,
Well he don’t know and she won’t say.
It’s a shame, it’s a shame
She won’t be the one to blame
Oh the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.
Yeah, it’s a shame, it’s a shame
She won’t be the one to blame
Yeah the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.
Yeah the hurtinest thing in the whole wide world
Is the heart of a lonely girl.
23. December 2012 at 12:35
[...] covered this in more detail here, but this song leapt off the record with its vaguely Celtic hook, sharp lyrics, and deep groove. [...]