Since getting an iPod two years back, I’ve been slowly accumulating a very modest collection of songs. For Christmas, someone gave me an iTunes gift card. For $1.29 each, I bought two of the best songs ever written:
• “Let It Be” by The Beatles.
• “Red Solo Cup” by Toby Keith.
They move me.
The Beatles are, of course, the undisputed best band ever, and “Let It Be” speaks of the come-what-may spirit of the late 1960s when we worried only about the big things: Nuclear holocaust and Reds under ever bed. We didn’t expect government to be our nanny, build our cars and give us houses. We didn’t look to Big Brother to wipe our noses and make our beds. We worried about the Soviets nuking us to a cinder.
During that terrifying age, four British boys from Liverpool came across the pond to send American girls into a frenzy and make the boys grow their hair long in hope of earning the same reaction. In 1968 when the British band members were quarrelling, Paul McCartney penned “Let It Be” as a vision from his late mother Mary.
And when the brokenhearted people
Living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be.
The Beatles didn’t let it be, of course. They broke up. I have been letting it be lately, and it has been good for my blood pressure and my waistline.
Along, now, comes the sage of this age, Toby Keith of Moore, Okla., where his name is painted on the big water tower on I-35 between Norman and Oklahoma City. He sings an ode to a red plastic cup, much like poet John Keats did to a Grecian urn in the 19th century. Only this is better.
There was a pent-up time in my life when I would have thought “Red Solo Cup” was silly and ridiculous. No more. At this stage, it’s deep. I had never talked to a plastic cup of any color, but I have often talked to understanding cows.
Keats is considered one of the …