I’m supposed to hate Rascal Flatts. I’m not exactly sure why. Are they too pretty? Do they not write their own material? Are they just not country enough?

Back when we lived in one homogenous society, it was important to be hip. When you knew every record on the hit parade, even if you didn’t like that genre of music, when you could see EVERY film released, before there were FIVE HUNDRED CABLE CHANNELS!

Oh is life confusing. It’s an overwhelming onslaught. Where do you spend your time? What club do you want to be a member of?

I know the hip music crowd. I used to be a member of it. We hated the Carpenters. But how could I explain that I lived to hear "Yesterday Once More" on the AM radio of my Chevy convertible? And twenty years after THAT the cognoscenti said the Carpenters were good AFTER ALL! HUH?

Rascal Flatts broke before I got the country memo. They were part of the Disney empire. I knew I was supposed to like something darker, more authentic. But when I heard their music on the radio, I didn’t want to turn it off. And then I got to the point where I looked forward to hearing the single from their new album, "Take Me There". I couldn’t find anything wrong with it, it made me FEEL GOOD!

So I’m sitting in the kitchen a couple of hours back, doing what I like most in life, eating Dannon coffee yogurt whilst reading the newspapers. And accompanying me, the special sauce, was XM’s Highway 16. And about twenty minutes in, when I’d fully escaped from my surroundings, was ensconced in the "Wall Street Journal"’s comparison of Facebook to GeoCities, these guys started TALKING on the radio.

Nobody talks on XM. Not much. It’s weird. Oftentimes you think you’re listening in a vacuum. In deep space. It’s just you and the MUSIC! But now these cats from Rascal Flatts were giving an explanation of their new music. And every reference sounded like rock to me, until they got to the Oak Ridge Boys. I don’t give a shit about the Oak Ridge Boys. So, I got back into the papers and then…THESE GUITARS START TO WAIL!

Where was it written that it had to be hard to listen to to be good? That you had to be an EDUCATED listener? That you just couldn’t go by your instincts, follow your DNA?

It’s a crazy fucked up world in which the most hated format is now the most similar to what I used to believe in. But that’s modern country. Oh, don’t tell me about the Nashville power brokers, the right wing radio. All I’ll say is they’re playing guitars, you can understand what they’re singing, and the music FEELS GOOD!

Kind of like "More Than A Feeling".

You remember when that hit the airwaves in the fall of ’76. More bad words were written about Boston than any other act of similar stature/record sales. Corporate rock. The beginning of the end. Then Brad Delp commits suicide and everybody comes out of the woodwork and says THEY LOVE BOSTON!

I love Boston. "Foreplay/Long Time" more than "More Than A Feeling". But really, "Hitch A Ride". I sing that to myself every day. It just feels right, it puts me in a mood.

So I went online and stole the Rascal Flatts album. And every track made sense. And I’m listening on my iPod as I’m lying on the floor doing my back exercises and "Still Feels Good" starts to play.

There’s the sweet harmonies the Eagles trademarked, that they punted on for an old J.D. Souther track that ain’t making much headway on country radio. And then someone less talented than Joe Walsh, but with just as much passion, is wringing a waterfall of sound out of his axe. It ain’t acoustic, it’s AMPLIFIED! And in the deep distance you can hear just the hint of a fiddle. And then it all breaks down…

That old t-shirt you wear to bed
Hangin’ off your shoulder by a thread
The one you ripped off me when we first met
Still feels good

That’s how you know you’ve got a relationship, when you’re wearing each other’s CLOTHES!

How long is your relationship with rock? Long enough to embrace the work of guys younger than you, playing in a genre you’ve sworn sucks?

That old familiar song blarin’ from my car
We know every note, every word by heart
Puts a smile on your face ’cause you know it’s ours
And it still feels good

This is us. We grew up addicted to the radio. We truly tasted freedom when we got behind the wheel and dialed in the stations our parents hated and BLASTED THEM! We love music. We don’t know where to turn. We’re afraid of looking uncool, but we still want that SOUND!

Oh, there’s a chorus. Even a banjo. But what makes me write this is the fucking WAILING GUITARS! I don’t know if Dann Huff, guitarist extraordinaire, the producer of this album, is playing, but whoever it is is a virtuoso. You know, a guy who never played football, was not president of his class, but stayed at home PRACTICING! Someone who never gave up, went to L.A. or Nashville to make it. And is HONORED to play on records!

You can choose to be out of the loop on this one. You can tell me it’s a hip-hop nation. I’ll just point to Nickelback. No matter WHAT you think of the band’s music its sales prove we live in a ROCK AND ROLL NATION! The mainstream press didn’t get the memo, but those in Nashville did. They’ve recast their music for the demo, they’ve entered an abandoned sphere, inhabited by baby boomers in the seventies.

I’m not a betting man. But I surmise that Rascal Flatts will blow Kanye away. Oh, you won’t see them on the train-wreck VMAs. There won’t be a battle with Kenny Chesney in the press (actually, they’re friends!) But when the SoundScan totals are released next week expect them to have sold in excess of a million copies of their new album.

Oh, does this mean the business is saved?

Anything BUT!

This just proves that there’s a demand for good music. Stuff that’s easy to listen to, that makes you feel good.

Start with these criteria. Rather than trying to impress your buddies in the business.

Note: There are two versions of "Still Feels Good" out there. Pass on the 2:39 one, download the 3:56 album version with the extended guitar coda.