Kenny Rogers – ‘Coward Of The County’

26 February 1980

Two brief housekeeping notes before you read on:

1) From February to October 1980 the regular Irish singles chart was part of a strike action. During this time, Hot Press magazine published a fortnightly chart, and this is what we’ll see until normal service resumes.

2) Content warning: sexual violence.

A U.S. country music record topping the UK and Irish singles charts, a rare occurrence even for country & Irish-loving Ireland, would normally be cause for considering how and why, and what makes this an exception. However, one feature of your typical country song is that it tells a story, and ‘Coward Of The County’ tells a particularly unpleasant one. The title character is a young man who refuses to fight and as a result gets called a coward. Oh, the humanity! Luckily, our storyteller presents him with a timely plot device to right this grievous wrong; a trio of no-good local brothers gang-rape his girlfriend. Now he can confront them in a bar and beat them up. Male honour duly redeemed through violence, everything is okay in the world again: The End, roll credits.

This is a glossy production in the same genial, grandfatherly style as Rogers’ other signature hit, ‘The Gambler’, so, sight unseen, ‘Coward Of The County’ was likely to meet the same success; it was even, like ‘The Gambler’, converted into a TV movie. But one listen to this crass, sexist, exploitative record is enough experience of the ‘Coward Of The County’ universe for me.