NMC - The Shelton Brothers - Sitting on Top of the World
This is a much-covered tune, but I don't don't know any that accomplish what the Shelton Brothers managed in this early cover of the Mississippi Sheiks' hit song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcEvTg8-cpk
The fiddle playing is good, but, as far as I can tell, it's the minor harmonies in the chorus in this cover that throw the lyric ("I'm sittin' on top of the world") into savage irony. I don't know any other cover that plays it that way; most play it straight. But you can't hear this chorus and believe a word that the lyric says.
I'm a big fan of irony, and part of Hank Williams' legacy is that country music has always had a lot of it (rock, in contrast, has none), but this is deeper and more subtle irony that is common even in country.
Anyone else hearing something I'm not?
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')
C.S. Lewis
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