Now before my year in Oklahoma I had listened to one or two mainstream country songs that made it across the pond which, by the way, are far different from real country songs. It wasn't until my first night out in Norman that I had my first true country music experience. I will never forget ten exchange students crowding around my laptop during a pre-party at my new apartment, one of which was a huge country fan from Austria, looking up the best and worst of Oklahoman music. The scene looked a little something like this below... Our facial expressions say it all.
I can't say I have been hooked since that fateful night but I can say that after a year a special place for it has grown in my heart, after all it did teach me "y'all", "nawh" and other useful terminology! Country music also gave me the opportunity to learn both the two-step and line dancing, neither of which I thought I would be participating in at nightclubs, obviously I had not experienced Oklahoma nightlife. Unfortunately I did not get the opportunity to make my mark on the club aptly named 'Cowboys' in which live bull riding is participated in on the hour every hour. Yes, real bulls. Only in Oklahoma. However I did give the bouncer of our only local club 'Logans' a chuckle when I was complaining outside about the continuous playlist of the same songs that have been played in the same order every weekend for the entire year (and probably the year before that) to which he replied 'You're so English', actually I'm Welsh.
My favorite memory has to be of my first trip to Texas in October. Shortly before this trip I had begun to forget what British radios playing pop music sounded like, as there is only one channel that does not play country music in the state of Oklahoma. It wasn't until we were an hour away from Dallas that we began to pick up what I would call 'normal' stations and the second we did the car full of Europeans erupted into praise for Texas... Something as an honorary Oklahoman I thought I would never say. Its not until you've driven for miles through the middle of nowhere in states such as Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma with nothing but Spanish or country music to listen to that you begin to appreciate even the monotone nonsense of BBC radio discussions...
And on that note I will leave you with the wise words of Elvis himself "Well I've never been to Heaven, but I've been to Oklahoma"
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