It seems the levees of the motion picture industry could not contain the ego of Kevin Costner, and now it has spilled out and flooded country music. Hurrivain Costner made landfall on record shelves today in the form of “Untold Truths,” an album featuring 12 tracks with titles that include “Superman 14,” “Five Minutes From America” and “Hey Man What About You?”
We don’t plan on ever listening to the album, mainly because $700 billion may not be enough to bail out the US economy, but it probably was enough to make Costner sound just good enough to not be entertainingly horrific. But, that won’t stop us from speculating on what the songs are about!
Based on Costner’s movie aesthetic, we imagine “Untold Truths” is a concept album about an alcoholic ex-rodeo cowboy with a name like Gruff Stone.
1. LONG HOT NIGHT – Introduces Gruff as an American boy in Japan and goes on to describe his first love Domo Arigato Misuta and the couple’s wonderful evening out behind the pagoda. Alas, the relationship is broken off when Domo’s emperor father finds out his princess daughter is in love with a lowly pale skin.
2. 90 MILES AN HOUR – Gruff’s life is turned upside down when his father, a CIA operative and American philosophy professor at Tokyo University, is killed by a North Korean ninja assassin, and young Gruff is whisked away to west Texas to live on his grandfather Pa Bud’s cattle ranch.
3. HEY MAN WHAT ABOUT YOU? – A heartbreaking song about how mean boys can be. Other rancher teenagers make fun of Gruff for not being raised in America, often leading to brutal beatings. The chorus repeats the song’s title angrily, but at the very end of the song the music stops and Costner pleads quietly, “Yes. What about me?”
4. SUPERMAN 14 – What the other rancher boys don’t know is that Gruff studied the lost art of Taikego under the old master Moogoo Gaipan while he was in Japan. He could kill them all if he wanted to, but the laws of Taikego only allow you to use this deadly form of karate to save the world.
5. DON’T LOCK’EM AWAY (SONG FOR MOLLY) – Gruff doesn’t press charges after the other rancher boys get drunk and spray paint Hello Kitty on Gruff’s horse Molly.
6. DOWN IN NOGALES – Gruff intentionally falls from a bull in the Arizona World Championship of Bull Riding, allowing one of the rancher boys that spray painted his horse to win because the rival rider’s sister can’t afford a kidney transplant.
7. EVERY INTENTION – Gruff enters a downward spiral of alcoholism and sleeping with gorgeous waitresses that want to marry him. It’s a broken dream confession of what could have been if Gruff had allowed his own greatness free reign of his life.
8. FIVE MINUTES FROM AMERICA – Gruff nearly gets beaten to death after a drunken rodeo performance just across the border in Mexico. As “sombreros of death” beat him mercilessly, Gruff’s arms outstretch in patented Costner fashion, revealing Gruff as a Christ figure.
9. THE SUN WILL RISE AGAIN – Gruff miraculously survives the Mexican beat-down and emerges naked and bloody from a cave with new resolve. He grabs a Rising Sun Japanese war flag afghan from a sleeping Mexican vendor and marches back across the border into Texas.
10. BACKYARD – Gruff returns to Pa Bud’s ranch to find his grandfather slain by a North Korean ninja assassin. CIA agents arrive by helicopter and tell Gruff it is up to him to save the world. After seven choruses of “I just wanted to ride the bulls, work all day until I’m tard, I just wanted to live a normal life, right here in my own backyard” Gruff reluctantly agrees to save the world. CIA agents escort Gruff into the helicopter (or “big green bull” as described in the final verse) and they fly off into the sunset.
11. LELAND IOWA – The North Korean ninja assassins are planning to take over the United States and their headquarters is cleverly located in the small town of Leland, Iowa. That’s where Gruff unleashes the full force of his Taikego and kills ’em all, rescuing the imprisoned Domo Arigato Misuta. CIA agents plead with him to take over as president but he refuses.
12. GOTTA GET AWAY (SONG FOR BUD) – Gruff takes Domo and they slip away, back to Pa Bud’s ranch where they plan to have kids and live out the rest of their lives quietly, retiring forever the unbelievably awesome greatness that is in Gruff.
Ha! I did it! I wrote this entire post without once mentioning Joaquin Phoenix or Don Johnson!
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