The Big Squeeze: Day Forty-Four: "Good Enough For Now" from Polka Party!
Same genre, different tune
The Big Squeeze is a chronological trip back through the music of “Weird Al” Yankovic. The column was conceived with two big objectives in mind. First and foremost, I wanted to inspire conversation and appreciation of a true American hero. Even more importantly, I wanted to promote the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity edition of the Weird Accordion to Al book, which is like this column but way, way, better and this column is pretty damn good, because it has illustrations and copy-editing and over 27 new illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro and over 120 new pages covering The Compleat Al, UHF, The Weird Al Show, the fifth season of Comedy Bang! Bang! and the 2018 tour that gave the extended version of the book its name.
Author’s Commentary: When I first started working on the Weird Accordion to Al column in 2017 and early 2018 I remember thinking how unfortunate it was that here I was immersing myself in all of this wonderful music that I had absolutely zero chance to experience live.
Oh sure, Al might break out the occasional obscurity or deep album cut but for the most part Al’s previous tours were focused understandably on the hits and the new stuff.
So you can imagine how excited I was to learn of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour. Through an awesome twist of fate it looks like I WOULD finally have an opportunity to hear obscurities and deep album cuts performed live for an adoring and appreciative audience.
I was particularly excited to hear “Good Enough for Now” in concert both because it’s one of my favorite early originals and because I have an unusually intense relationship with country music.
In 2009 and 2010 I educated myself about the rich, complicated and complex history of country music and its greatest stars for an A.V Club column called Nashville or Bust.
Like The Weird Accordion to Al, Nashville or Bust represented an ambitious, years-long journey through music and popular culture involving listening and writing and no small amount of travel.
Yes, I love all my columns equally but I like the ones I can monetize by turning into books the best. Thankfully, going on the Nashville or Bust adventure deepened my love and appreciation of country music and let me understand “Good Enough for Now” in a whole new way.
When I finally got to hear “Good Enough For Now” in concert it was everything that I had hoped for and more.
I’ve always treasured those memories the same way I do those involving Phish and the Gathering of the Juggalos, but they are particularly special now that the idea of going to a packed show to see a favorite musician feels like an impossible fantasy.
Original Weird Accordion to Al article:
I’ve always been impressed by the versatility, talent and professionalism of Al and his band. Al and his musicians are proficient in seemingly every form of music, with the possible exception of Ghettotech, a musical sub-genre that, full disclosure, I know nothing about. It goes beyond that. When Al wants to, for example, do a reggae song about the seductive emptiness of American-style consumerism like “Buy Me A Condo” he doesn’t make a “Weird Al” Yankovic song with a reggae feel or a reggae vibe. No, when Al wants to do reggae, he writes a reggae song, even if it’s a complete anomaly in his oeuvre.
On a similar note, when “Lonesome” Al Yankovic decided to pull a Ray Charles/Ween/Hootie from Hootie & The Blowfish and go country he didn't write a song that sounded like a country version of a “Weird Al” Yankovic song. No, he wrote a proper country song that just happened to be funny and satirical.
And, as is generally the case, Al and his collaborators weren’t afraid to seek out ringers in the form of accomplished session musicians who’d spent their careers working in the countrified fields Al and the gang were gingerly dipping a toe in. No proper country song is complete with pedal steel guitar so “Good Enough For Now” features straight-faced pedal steel from session musician Jim Cox, and fiddle from Dennis Fetchet.
Lyrically, the song is sung from the perspective of one of Al’s signature lousy Lotharios, one of his Creepy Casanovas. But where the protagonists in “Weird Al” Yankovic songs tend to see sex and romance through the prism of their own insanity and inability to understand reality, the country crooner of “Good Enough For Now” is just kind of a jerk.
Country music is full of outsized declarations of love of dubious sincerity but the singer of “Good Enough For Now” takes great plains to establish that his love for what he deems, in a compliment so mild and backhanded it actually qualifies as something of an insult, “an above average lady" comes with an endless series of caveats and modifiers.
In his partner, the singer will concede only that he’s relatively lucky, as he probably couldn’t ask for too much more. Indeed, she’s “almost just” what he’s been looking for. When a love comes with back-to-back modifiers like that, it begins to seem not much like love at all.
Sure, the singer will offer a country-sized declaration of love like, “Oh, I couldn't live a single day without you”, but he immediately undercuts it with, "Actually, on second thought, well, I suppose I could.” Our singer is pragmatic, candid and honest to a fault. He’s never afraid to establish the limits of his affection, or the moderate nature of his romantic feelings.
Good Enough For Now” is kind of like “My Funny Valentine”, a love song that could easily pass for a sustained insult or, alternately, a sustained insult cannily masquerading as a different kind of love song. And when I mean “different” I mean “kind of insulting.” The song’s narrator can’t praise the object of his lukewarm semi-affection without also insulting her, directly or indirectly.
In that respect he’s a little like Pick-up artists who practice the deplorable act of “negging”, or insulting a woman with back-handed compliments and confusing semi-insults so that insecure women will feel the need to prove their attractiveness and desirability by sleeping with the pick-up artist. Am I suggesting that the protagonist of “Good Enough For Now” invented negging? Yes, yes I am. If you really look at the last four decades of pop culture, and also life, “Weird Al” Yankovic pretty much pioneered or invented everything.
“Good Enough For Now” is a semi-love song of intense passive-aggression, but I can say without equivocation that it is an exquisitely crafted sleeper that grows on you. It’s more than just kind of funny, or relatively clever: it’s genuinely inspired.
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