As predicted, most other State Songs are pretty lame

STATE SONGS 2: THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL

Remember a couple of days ago when we talked about how California needs a new State Song and then Burrito Justice went on his radio show and talked about it some more?  That was fun.  I said in that last post that we would look at other state's State Songs.  This is me delivering on that admittedly boring promise.

Here's the list.  Of note is the fact that only New Jersey has not seen fit to name a state song, which is cool because everyone knows the Sopranos theme is the New Jersey State Song.

Let's get the winners out of the way first.  #1 is Georgia, whose state song is "Georgia on My Mind," predictably enough, as sung by Ray Charles.




Give you chills.  OK, that's it.  The others are all pretty much crap, except maybe "Tennessee Waltz," which is a pretty great song, and "Do You Realize??" by the Flaming Lips, the Official Rock Song of Oklahoma.  What the fuck Oklahoma.  Oklahoma is so conservative they think Copernicus was a dangerous radical and running away is the only acceptable form of birth control and they let a bunch of acid gobbling freaks write the State Rock Song.  Yes I know the Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma thank you.

Tennessee, not content with just one Official Song, had to go and get fucking 10 Official Songs, including "A Tennessee Bicentennial Rap: 1796-1996," which is performed by an elderly white woman and is not something you would want to listen to willingly.

Most of them are just "State Name" or "My State Name" or "Oh State Name," but once in a while you get an outlier like "Here We Have Idaho," which sounds like someone is going over a map with a customer in a cartography store, trying to convince them to make a purchase by pointing out the completeness of the store's Official USA Map.

During our State Songs discussions yesterday, I learned about the doomed attempt to make "Roadrunner" by the Modern Lovers the Official State Rock Song of Massachusetts.  Massacusetts has taken the, to my mind, fun and inclusive approach of having a variety of State Songs in different genres, such as a State Folk Song ("Massachusetts," by Arlo Guthrie) and, charmingly, a State Polka ("Say Hello to Someone From Massachusetts," Lenny Gomulka virtually commands).

New York has "I Love New York" which has not aged well and sounds like a shampoo commercial from 1978.  Obviously they need to replace it with "Empire State of Mind" like yesterday.

And a final shoutout to Washington state, which has seen fit to have an "Unofficial Rock Song," namely "Louie Louie."  We gotta go.