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Country Music, Raising Boys, Raising Girls, Song Analysis

How To Impress Shania According to Two Dads Who Drive Minivans

The Dads break down one of Shania’s biggest hits and answer the question guys have wrestled with for the past 25 years: if brains, looks, and a car don’t impress Shania, what does?

Mentioned in This Episode:

Show Notes:

  • 12:18 Dad Life Sound Check – After dealing with a potential bullying situation with one of the boys Dave felt like he needed a drink. Mick realized that he wouldn’t be able to celebrate mothers if God hadn’t given him a girl.        
  • 14:54 HARDY Report – HARDY gives the commencement speech at his alma mater, Middle Tennessee State University.
  • 18:38 Farm Boy Update – Mick laments the fact that since the chickens started free-ranging they are messing up all his newly spread mulch.
  • 20:20 Shania shares the three things that don’t impress her. And The Dads share their takes on what does.

Sources:

Transcript

I agree, and I would be willing to say that if you showed up in the middle of the desert in a minivan to pick Shania Twain up who is standard there with her leopard print suitcase, she would probably accept a ride from you.

That’s right, she had a lot of luggage, and you’d put the seats down, and plenty of space.

Peace.

This is Country Music Dads, the parenting podcast with a Twain.

We’re bringing you highly subjective, sometimes questionable, but always 100% authentic country music analysis, as only two dads in the trenches of modern parenting could do it.

My name is Dave, and I’m a country music dad.

My name is Mick, and I’m also a country music dad, and thank you for joining us.

It has been approximately 25 years since Shania Twain released That Don’t Impress Me Much, and since then, guys everywhere have wrestled with the question of what does impress Shania?

Well, Dave and I are both dads who happen to be primary caregivers, and we think we have the answer.

But before we get to that, Dave, tell us what’s been going on in your world.

I will.

Well, that’s what I’m hoping for.

That’s why I asked.

Well, I appreciate you always asking.

You’re always looking out for me.

You know, for the thing that’s been on my mind lately, I actually almost called you for advice, honestly, for this one.

Oh, man.

This is just new territory for me.

You know, so my son, my oldest son has a friend who is one of those kids that’s just super aggressive, a little bit overbearing.

You might say annoying.

And this friend has kind of been going a little bit too far, roughhousing and stuff to the point where there was an incident this week where I felt like it looked like he was kind of bullying my son.

He kind of got some other kids to gang up on him, steal his shoes.

He’s like throwing them around the yard.

And this kid’s always acting out and playing rough.

Was this at your house or was like the school yard?

This was the school yard after pick up, after pick up at kindergarten.

So they like to like mess around on the yard outside the school.

So they’ve released the kids.

They’re kind of on their own.

Parents are picking them up or in this kid’s case, he’s got another caregiver that picks him up that doesn’t really pay attention to what he’s doing.

So a lot of times I have to kind of decide when I’m going to intervene because of some past behavior or my son’s gotten injured by some of this behavior.

You know, I saw this, I saw the look in my son’s eyes and I could tell.

Like, he wasn’t having this.

This was really bothering him.

And so I had to intervene, use my big scary dad voice in the yard.

Everybody heard it.

I think even the parents thought they were in trouble.

Leaves were falling off the trees.

The ground shook a little bit.

2.6 on the Richter scale.

Yeah, that’s right.

And so we went home and I kind of got got some more details from my son and it was bothering him.

You know, I think my instincts were right about that.

But of course, I started to kind of doubt myself that, you know, maybe I’m taking it too far.

Am I freaking out about something that I shouldn’t be?

Is this just kids being kids?

Kind of stewed on it for the rest of the afternoon.

And eventually I did call the kid’s dad and I’m friendly with him.

He’s one of my neighbors.

And we’ve talked about his kid’s behavior and like our kid’s friendship and their relationship before.

I was about to call you because I was going to ask you, like, should I call this dad?

Am I overreacting?

Do I just leave this alone?

And eventually I just went for it.

I called him and I’m glad I did because we had a really good interaction.

We’re on the same page with how our kids are reacting to each other.

I gave him some information that I was witnessing because he’s not usually at the pickup line to see this.

I also gained some more understanding of like who he feels like his kid actually is and some of the issues that they have at home with him.

And most importantly, I’m very glad that I already had a relationship with this dad, that this wasn’t the first time that we were talking to each other when some issue comes up.

Because I think that went a long way for making this a positive interaction, that we had some rapport, we established some trust.

So when I come to him with something kind of awkward or hairy, you know, I might have overreacted and I might be wrong.

But I think that we’re each going to give each other the benefit of the doubt because we already know each other.

So just like another reminder to me, just to make sure that I’m talking to the parents at the pickup line, I’m talking to the parents of my kids’ friends so that we have some rapport and that I’m not just checking my phone at pickup the whole time, that I’m actually reaching out, being friendly and being a little bit uncomfortable with some of these parents because you never know when you’ll have to kind of address a more serious issue with what’s going on.

This is a situation, I think, that every parent runs into in some way, shape or form.

And there’s just really a lot to unpack here.

I mean, kind of start at the beginning, you know your child better than anyone else.

So when you said that you saw the look, your radar went off.

And that’s something that you only get by being an active, involved parent.

And the fact that we are lucky enough and blessed even to be able to be that is just really fantastic because your job as a parent is to ultimately be the biggest advocate for your child.

I was thinking in that direction, it made me doubt myself less when I thought about that.

Like I’m with him a lot.

I think that my instincts are accurate because I’m around him so much.

Because sometimes the kids won’t come to you, even if they’re comfortable, you know, maybe they’re embarrassed, maybe they’re scared, maybe they don’t want to get the new friend in trouble, or maybe they just don’t know themselves.

I mean, you know, we’re talking five-year-old kids, six-year-old kids.

Sometimes they don’t know what’s bothering them.

Hells, teenagers don’t even know what’s bothering them.

Adults, we don’t even know half the time what’s bothering us.

Sure, it’s a lifelong lesson in learning how to deal with our own emotions and stuff.

I think the key is that you had already kind of had some type of a relationship, you know, with this other parent, other family, because lots of times you’re maybe just flying blind and you’re just guessing as what’s going on.

And you don’t know their home situation.

You know, even if you do have a rapport, you don’t know.

So, you know, we’ve run into situations kind of like this, never with anything more physical.

It’s always been just kind of more the she said, she said type things.

We’ve just kind of done the same thing.

We’ve aired on the side of Caution, contacted the parents and said, we don’t necessarily know that we have all the information, but something’s going on.

And can you, would you be willing to help us kind of get to the bottom of it?

Because we know we’re only getting one side of the story, but something’s going on has been always the way that we’ve tried to approach it.

Yeah, going with like an open mind to those conversations.

I was feeling a lot of strong emotions too.

Like actually seeing your kid getting bullied is pretty, it’s kind of jarring.

Or just physically upset or just anything.

You don’t, right, the instincts kick in in a spidey sense.

His friend, both of them, they’re only six years old, so I didn’t want to be harboring ill will towards some six-year-old because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Sometimes.

Sometimes, unfortunately, they do.

And that’s when you need to involve maybe the people, your school counselors or your teachers or things of that nature.

Yeah, that’s a good point.

So anyway, how’s parenting going in your world?

We are in the month of May.

And you will learn this if you are not starting to experience this already.

But the month of May is the most chaotic month in the school calendar.

I’m starting to feel shades of that comment on something that The Dad Time Out Show.

Yeah, MK and the guys, yeah, I listen to them a lot.

Yeah, that’s a good show.

They were mentioning how crazy May was, and they use the term May-Sember, because it’s like December with the holidays and everything.

And I’ve never heard that before.

And I’m starting to feel that a little bit.

You’re right, I don’t think I’m there yet because my kids aren’t, school isn’t quite as demanding on them, and there’s not as many activities.

But there’s a lot more than at other times, for sure.

Every activity that goes through school, unless it’s something like a seasonal specific, let’s use basketball, for example.

Basketball season is usually in the winter and it has its end of basketball season celebration in the winter.

But if it’s like a year long event or just a classroom event or anything of that nature, just every event happens in May.

And if you have kids that are involved in more than one event or activity, then it just extrapolates from there.

So then you throw in the aspect of the last year of school.

So like last year, we went to two different senior honors type events where they’re recognizing the kids for their different academic achievements.

And then there’s like departmental awards.

Then you have like the end of the season robotics banquet.

We haven’t even hit the baccalaureate ceremony and graduation yet.

We’re still in the last day of school and the turn in, it’s like, okay, find the power cord for your computer.

You got to turn that in.

Well, okay, I don’t know where it is.

I’ve been using this one all year long.

Well, why haven’t you said anything?

Why aren’t you using the power cord that school issued?

We got to find that.

Well, you know, okay, I’ll look, I’ll look.

There’s a lot going on in the month of May.

Sometimes you just have to divide and conquer when it goes, when it comes to going to certain things.

Sometimes you just can’t, as much as you want to be active and involved, sometimes you just can’t go to everything.

That’s true.

The power of the opt out.

Exactly.

But it’s good because it’s fun and you get to see their accomplishments over the years.

Or you get to see them interacting with their friends.

Maybe you’re able to get to the teacher pulled off to the side a little bit, and just maybe express your thanks or get some insight into.

Because I’m a firm believer in talking to people face to face, because so much context cannot be gained from email or text communication.

And I’m old, so I like to talk face to face rather than type.

And I never learned to type properly, so typing for me is very slow.

But I’m just a firm believer in one-on-one communication.

So all that being said, if you’re able to have a few words with maybe somebody on the school staff, whether they’re a teacher or a club activity sponsor, just to kind of get some insight that just goes into that whole building relationships thing.

Especially if you’re going to maybe have other kids coming up, maybe you’ll have that teacher or that activity again, or you’re just involved in the school from maybe like a PTO standpoint.

So you’re kind of there.

So the school knows you.

It just goes towards building rapport and with other parents too, not just the teachers.

I think a lot of those events, it’s not a chore to go to that stuff.

It is fun.

It all happens at the same time.

Correct.

It’s just the amount of the events.

It’s not the actual event itself.

It’s just the amount of them.

It’s just like, okay, what’s going on tonight?

Because then you’re still having to balance that with your other extracurricular activities like dance class or for you, baseball practice and everything.

Sometimes there’s just not enough hours in the day.

Yep.

Yep.

That’s what’s been going on.

Dad life sound check time.

What song’s running through your brain?

In a continuation of what I was talking about before, after I hung up the phone with my neighbor, after spending the whole afternoon kind of debating in my head what I was going to do about the issues my son was facing, I hung up the phone and I was like, I need a drink, man.

Why We Drink by Justin Moore popped into my head.

That’s not the healthiest way to deal with stressful situations.

It’s a fun song, basically saying that any reason under the sun is a reason to drink.

I felt like I had a good reason after my emotionally charged Tuesday.

Sometimes you just need a little bit of time to yourself to check out for a few minutes, to regroup, and if that happens to involve a beer or whatever, that’s okay.

As long as you’re not taking it to the extreme and using that as excuse to avoid everything.

What have you been listening to lately?

I kind of going back to, we just recently celebrated the moms in our life and heard a song on the other day that just always kind of makes me stop and think about that I wouldn’t be here or wouldn’t be where I am if I didn’t have someone in my life who is a mother, which has then made me a father, which has then just created all kinds of other fantastic things.

The song God Gave Me a Girl by Russell Dickerson has just always been a favorite of mine.

I really like the chorus, because he just talks about getting a ring or meeting a girl, and then giving her a ring, and giving her your name, and then how he just feels like it’s just made him whole.

So that’s how I interpret it, just made him complete.

And as we celebrate the moms in our life, I just think back to the fact that, well, it all started where they came a mom, you had to meet them and you had to give her your name, if you did or did not.

Some families don’t do that anymore and that’s fine.

But you give her a ring and then you move on.

So that song just always makes me stop and reflect on where I am in my life and how I got here by meeting a girl.

And by impressing a girl, you had to do that too.

We’ll talk about that a little later.

Yes, we will.

We’ll get back to it.

But as always, I know Hardy’s been up to something.

Hardy Report Time.

Hardy, as usual, is everywhere all at once.

And so he surprised me this week.

He showed up at Middle Tennessee State University, which is his alma mater, and he was giving the commencement address at their graduation.

And so it was a little jarring to see him in like a robe because Hardy seems he’s, he’s usually wearing like jean shorts that are a little bit too short and like a hockey jersey.

I almost didn’t recognize him.

The robe kind of covers up the tattoos and stuff.

But he posted it on his Instagram page, the full speech.

And of course, I watched it.

Shocker.

I know.

Hold on, hold on.

Hardy wearing a robe and everything.

Did he look like a computer science teacher maybe?

Yeah, actually, because he’s got the glasses.

The big glasses.

No ball cap.

So he looked like maybe more like a librarian than a computer science teacher.

I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I watched the speech and I think he did a bang up job on his speech.

Commencement speeches, I think, can be a little bit full of cliches and a little boring, a little repetitive.

And so my expectations were low for his speech.

But I really appreciate it.

He had some good messages about saying yes to opportunities, when to say no to opportunities, about imposter syndrome, about his own mental health and struggles with mental health that I relate to a lot.

He struggled with some panic attacks in the last couple of years and I had that too, actually, and I had to go to a therapist to get me over that.

Thankfully, I’ve been through that.

I’m not experiencing that anymore.

He mentioned that he’s using his platform to talk about working on your mental health.

I just thought it was a really nice, good, clean speech.

It also reminded me, Hardy’s brand is like, I’m this idiot redneck, but he’s a writer.

He’s a smart guy.

He went to school and he sounded pretty eloquent at the speech.

He mentioned during the speech also that he was the youngest commencement speaker that that school has ever had.

He’s an impressive guy.

I’ve been critical of Hardy lately during the Hardy reports.

When I see things like this, this is why I root for that guy because even if he’s going to make some creative decisions that maybe I’m not going to agree with, but he seems like a good, genuine guy.

He’s doing interesting things and he’s trying to create things and write things, and I can appreciate that.

I think somebody like Hardy, speaking to recent graduates, would probably just go over maybe a little bit better than the older person who just maybe has a background in nothing but academia, who just stands up there and just gives cliche after cliche.

So I would think that these kids would have been able to relate to that a lot better, a non-traditional type of commencement speaker.

So it probably was really good.

They probably got a lot out of it.

So props to Middle Tennessee for bringing him there.

I mean, good for them.

Yeah, for sure.

There’s a lot of different directions you can take with your commencement speaker.

But I think you’re right that a lot of the students could probably see themselves and his.

A small town and we’ll link it in the show notes.

It’s a good watch.

Hardy, such an inspiration.

Awesome.

So anything inspiring going on the farm?

The chickens are inspired right now because we have started letting them out of the coop to run around the yard.

So now on the old urban homestead, we’ve got free range chickens.

Now, I don’t let them out every day.

They’ve only been out a couple of times so far.

I wanted to make sure they were old enough that they could take care of themselves outside.

Because we do have owls and hawks around that could take them.

Luckily, we’ve never had an issue with that before and hopefully we never will.

But it’s just fun to watch the chickens roam around the yard and explore things for the first time.

That seems like a really healthy environment.

Got your chickens running around, get some exercise, get some vitamin D.

Yeah, and they’re eating bugs out of the grass and everything too.

So it’s win-win.

The part of the situation that is not win-win is, as I mentioned before, doing a whole bunch of landscaping for the upcoming graduation party.

Well, the ladies decided that they wanted to just do a whole bunch of foraging in a lot of the new freshly applied mulch.

So a little extra work for you.

Yeah, it’s kind of made a mess a few places.

Yeah, I’m going to have to try to figure out how to fence those areas off until after the party.

But it’s fun to watch them run around.

That’s why those free-range eggs cost a little bit more, a little more maintenance.

Exactly.

You have to factor in the cost of replacing the mulch that they scatter all over the place.

All right.

Well, I think it’s time that we can move on to the main subject matter at hand, and that being Shania Twain.

That don’t impress me much, but I’m going to let you start this off because this topic was your idea.

And so take it.

Tell us what you were thinking with this one.

Yes.

So we are talking Shania Twain this week, the queen of pop country.

More specifically, like you mentioned, we’re going to take a deep dive into one of her most popular songs, That Don’t Impress Me Much.

It debuted as a single in 1998 off of her third album, Come On Over.

And Come On Over was this massive hit out of the 16 songs on Come On Over.

12 were charting singles, 12 out of the 16, which is crazy.

And you know, especially when That Don’t Impress Me Much came out, I think it put men everywhere on notice that Shania, this massive star, she was not impressed by the typical things that guys like to brag about.

So guys in the 90s were left wondering and have been wondering for decades now, what does impress Shania if those things don’t?

So we’re going to explore that question today.

As two primary caregivers, I think we have the right perspective on this because I think we might just be the exact opposite of everything she talks about in this song.

Because it may have been a while since people have heard this song.

Let’s just give a quick reminder of what does not impress Shania.

Yeah, so number one, brains, smarts, that does not impress Shania.

So she’s got a line about, so you’re a rocket scientist.

That one hits a little close to home for me because I wasn’t a rocket engineer.

You are a rocket scientist.

No, no, no, I’m not.

Him works for an actual rocket company now, so I know that there’s a difference, okay?

I applied for that company a while back and I did not.

Yeah, but it works for me.

I got the email back saying, we’re looking at other directions.

No, you got an email back saying, Shania Twain looked at your resume and she was not impressed.

She was not impressed by my resume.

Okay.

So you’re a rocket scientist.

Thanks for watching!

So that’s it.

Shania Twain is our clearing house for potential rocket scientists.

If you can’t impress her, well, then you’ve got to have a little something more.

Keep driving down the desert.

Get in a fancy, then you can get in a fancy car.

Maybe a fancy car would impress Shania Twain.

I don’t know about that.

But on the brains.

So what would impress a woman like Shania?

You want somebody intelligent, I’m sure.

It makes me think that she’s talking about your job, like what you do.

You’re a rocket scientist.

That’s the peak of using your intellectual capacity to bring home the bacon in your line of work.

And so in our line of work, Mick, you don’t need the education or the training of a rocket scientist.

But when I mentioned to working dads that I’m a stay at home dad, when they learned that about me, I think I get one of two responses.

I either get the, oh, I wish I could do that.

That’s the dream, man.

Or I get the, oh, wow, that’s so hard, almost patronizingly.

That’s so hard.

I could never do that.

Yeah, it’s either one or two things.

You’re absolutely right.

Just thinking about in our job, we do bring home the bacon, literally.

We bring it home and we cook it.

And we cook it.

And if somebody doesn’t like bacon, we know and we don’t put bacon on their plate.

Then we eat their bacon because why let bacon go to waste?

That would be terrible.

Yeah, where I was going was I always thought she meant, don’t just focus on the singular aspect of I’m a job, because that there’s always more.

There’s more depth to it.

Don’t just let your job define you.

And how often have we heard that don’t be defined by what you do.

Define yourself in your own terms by who you are.

What you do is just a subset.

That’s just part of you.

It’s not all of you.

It’s just a little part of you.

Yeah, you’re totally right.

I remember when I first became a stay-at-home dad, I had trouble kind of describing myself because people would ask that, what do you do question?

And I was so used to saying, I’m an engineer.

I had to come up with another way to describe myself.

I think a lot of people describe themselves with what they do for work.

We do.

And that is so limiting.

And but we do it.

It’s so ingrained into our conversational habits.

How often do you meet somebody for the first time and, hi, my name is Mick.

Oh, nice to meet you, Dave.

It’s either, what do you do or where are you from?

Instead of just letting the conversation go somewhere else, it just seems like we’re programmed to label somebody.

And I’m not a big fan of that.

It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m the primary caregiver.

It just, why?

It kind of goes back to the last episode when we were talking about education.

You know, you can learn something from everybody.

So what if the person that you just meet is a rocket scientist?

So what?

Like Shania says, the person you just met may be something completely different.

So don’t label them just based on the title.

That’s how I always took it.

I think what I’ve learned as a parent, too, when I’m interacting with other parents, raising your kids is a great equalizer.

The parents in my kids’ classes, I don’t know what all of them do.

Like, some of them have really fancy jobs.

Some of them are like me, they’re dad home parents.

And talking about our kids kind of frees us from that, I think.

It’s like some of them, I don’t actually know what they do for a living.

I just know who their kid is and what our social relationship is like.

So there’s some freedom to that.

Because I’m sensitive to the what do you do question, I usually try to ask people what keeps you busy, or what do you like to do with your family or something like that.

Just kind of get away from that, define yourself by your employment.

That’s a good habit to try to get into, absolutely.

As far as our line of work and our relative intelligence, when I’m talking to those working dads about what we do as at home parents, cognitively, what we do each day, I think it’s not the most difficult thing in the world.

It’s also not the easiest thing to do in the world.

It is difficult.

A lot of dads especially that wouldn’t consider being primary caregivers of their kids or taking the lead with their kids, there’s this barrier where they wouldn’t even consider it.

It’s so foreign to them.

But I like to try to encourage them that actually it’s not so hard that you couldn’t do it.

You could do it.

It takes a little more social and emotional skill and endurance to take care of your kids full-time or more than maybe your spouse might.

But it’s just it’s not harder or easier necessarily.

It’s just different.

The way you phrased that is perfect in my opinion, because I have used very much the same verbiage over the years of it’s just different.

Maybe that’s what Shania is saying.

She just she wants different.

There’s a lot of smart guys she came across just looking for something different.

So the next thing that Shania mentions in That Don’t Impress Me Much are looks.

That has to be a factor.

So you’re Brad Pitt.

Now you have to be attracted to your other half.

But there is so much more.

And this is something that my wife constantly mentions to our kids, that there is just so much more to what a person looks like.

You have to be able to see or find or be willing to discover what makes the person who they are, not just what they’re like on the outside.

We’ve all heard the cliches, but they are true, pure and simple.

Yeah, this is kind of the easy one.

You know the answer to this one.

And frankly, I’m thankful because there are some days now as a parent where I don’t shower for 48 hours.

I’ve got all this hair.

I don’t know what to do with it.

Sometimes it’s not clean.

Actually, yesterday, I did shower yesterday and a staple fell out of my hair.

I don’t know how it got there.

So I’m thankful that there’s something else that people like my wife are looking for.

I’m just going to let that one go.

True story.

Inner beauty and not the detritus that gets stuck in my hair.

It’s a good thing you’re not a metalhead.

Maybe I’m just petty, cuz they’re just metal.

Wait, then again, so am I.

The next one is not hard for me at all, because I am not a car guy.

I am not into fancy cars or unfancy cars, or anything of that nature.

To me, a car is a method of transportation.

So you got a car.

That don’t impress me much.

We have that in common, I guess.

I am not a car guy either, so it’s an easy one for me, too.

You know, it’s funny, we were talking about rocket scientists, and Kim works with rocket scientists now, and she says that a lot of rocket scientists seem to also be car guys.

They are into their cars.

So it goes hand in hand.

I can see where that would make sense.

Do you think about high-performance type engines?

I mean, you need to have a high-performance engine on a rocket.

So I can see a correlation there.

Absolutely.

That does make sense.

But yeah, I’ve never been overly impressed by fancy cars.

So a good friend of mine works freelance as a all-things tech, but mostly video production type stuff.

And so he will fly out from time to time and work at the Mecham car auctions.

And he’ll take pictures or send snippets of some of these cars that just, some of them go for just millions of dollars, the really super one, fancy ones.

Mostly it’s just into the thousands.

And I’m just looking at these things and I’m like, yeah, it’s nice.

Yes, I would drive it, but I would not spend a crazy amount of money on whatever the Lamborghini was.

It only carries two people.

Where are you going to put the groceries?

I mean, it’s just not functional.

For sure.

But what is functional is a minivan.

Yeah, so reading between the lines here, I think Shania seems like maybe she’s a practical person.

She wants a practical solution to getting around.

And she raised her siblings.

Her parents died in a car crash when she was 22, and she had to raise her siblings.

She was one of five, so she was like the single mom, essentially.

And she’s a mom.

She has a son.

So I like to think that she’s not going to be distracted by the fancy cars or the powerful engines.

She would be most impressed by my favorite kind of car, which is a minivan.

I think it’s the correct kind of car for a parent.

There’s no other solution.

As long as you can…

Minivans aren’t cheap, but if you can afford one, there is no reason to get anything else.

I agree, and I would be willing to say that if you showed up in the middle of the desert in a minivan to pick Shania Twain up, who is standard there with her leopard print suitcase, she would probably accept a ride from you.

That’s right.

She had a lot of luggage.

And you’d put the seats down and plenty of space.

Yep, absolutely.

I think this is kind of connected to the first verse about brains.

If you’re looking for a car, you have a lot of kids, and you’re going to pick one of those massive SUVs, I just don’t understand why you would make that choice over a minivan.

The doors slide like this.

And actually in my new minivan, I have a Honda Odyssey now, which I always thought that that was the epitome of a mom van.

So I steered clear of the Odyssey for my first couple.

I went with the Toyota Sienna hybrid first.

It’s very sleek and almost looks like an SUV.

So I was fooling myself.

I was trying to fool people into thinking that, like, see, it’s not actually a minivan.

It was kind of a minivan in disguise.

And then I had the Chrysler Pacifica, which also is pretty cool looking, plug-in hybrid.

I have now, I think, reached a new plane of existence in my life as a parent because I don’t care how it looks at all.

My Odyssey is amazing.

I don’t need any bells and whistles.

There are no luxury features, but the door slide and the seat slide side to side, it is a game-changing feature, and I am all over this van.

Whether or not it looks like a mom van, it’s great.

I might never go back to anything else.

It’s funny you mentioned not going back to anything else.

So we are in the process of needing a new vehicle because the minivan’s got 250,000 miles on it, and it’s just starting to get a little bit long in the tooth, and Luke’s going to go off to college, so he’ll probably take his car.

Rory is 16 now, so she needs something to drive.

So we’re like, okay, it’s time.

For the longest time, Kelly is just like, maybe we should get the SUV, or maybe we should want another truck and everything.

I’m like, well, yeah, I’d love to have another truck, but it’s just not as practical.

Like you, I like my minivan.

I like being able to get everything and everybody in all at the same time.

The comparable size for an SUV to relate to the minivan size that I need would be one of those big ones, those escalates and everything.

The gas mileage on those things is just crazy, and they’re just so much more expensive than minivans, whether it be the Escalade or the GMC Yukon, or I guess that’s the Denali, isn’t it?

I don’t know.

I can’t keep them all straight.

The rental car place once, they didn’t have a minivan for me.

I think my car was in the shop, and so they gave me a GMC Yukon.

I was like, no, this is not a substitute.

Especially in LA with parking, there’s no way you can open those doors without doing some serious damage.

If you’re counting on your six-year-old to open the door, oh boy.

Isn’t that the worst?

The kids just throw the door open and you’re just like, no.

And next thing you know, you’re leaving your name and number for the car next door that you just…

Those giant SUVs are a hazard.

Yeah, no, I hear you.

That’s really good to hear from you, someone who lives out in the country, someone who I would assume would be all about the pickup truck, just like every country song.

The thought process is I will get another truck when the kids are older and we don’t necessarily…

Yes, Luke’s going off to college, but when he comes home and we still do family trips and everything, there’s still going to be five people.

And it’s five…

Well, Luke and Roy are, for all practical purposes, the size of adults.

So right now, four adults in a tween just don’t comfortably fit into a five-person car.

It just doesn’t work for longer trips.

And oftentimes, mother-in-law, when we take long trips, if we’re doing a family thing, grandma goes with us.

So, I mean, it’s not like we can’t tie grandma to the roof.

She needs a place to sit too.

So the minivan is what makes sense.

It’s what makes sense.

So far, I’ve only come across two country songs that talk about minivans.

There’s one that’s called Real Damn Good by the Josh Abbott band.

And the other one is by Hardy, actually.

Hardy and Brantley Gilbert.

I think Toby Keith’s on it, too.

It’s called the worst country song of all time.

They’re talking about, ironically, everything that is the opposite of a great country song.

So the opposite of a truck would be your minivan.

But I don’t think Shania would agree, I think she’d be with us.

Practicality and the usefulness of features and sliding doors.

It just, yeah, sliding doors are good.

Yeah, it just all goes, I mean, the main point of the song that I’ve always thought, and be interested in what you think.

What I’ve always thought the main point of the song is just very simply, dig a little deeper, get into what really makes you you.

How can you really relate to a person one on one?

What are you going to be able to talk about when you, when the lights are turned off and you can’t see what the other person looks like, when you don’t want to talk with your spouse or partner about their job all the time, and the car is parked in the garage.

When you get those three things, you get those three things checked off, and at the end of the day, then what are you going to do?

Then you need somebody that you can really relate to, someone that will listen to you, someone that you can communicate with, someone that you feel at home, someone you feel at home with.

That’s what I’ve always thought this song was about.

Yeah, well said.

I think what I feel like this song is about is what we can offer and what someone like Shania or like our wives would appreciate is someone that prioritizes them over some of these other things, like career or their looks or their crazy workout regimen or their hobbies, like keeping up their car, keeping their car clean, or fixing up their car.

I think prioritizing your partner is going to be the thing that matters when you can kind of look beyond yourself and in our case, think about our wives’ needs and their desires.

We’re doing that pretty clearly with our decisions to stay home and take care of the kids, and I think that that’s something that I know that Kim appreciates.

So I got a question for you.

We talked about, so you mentioned earlier this song is like 25 years old.

You know, the same cliches are there, looks, cars.

If this song came out today, do you think it would still be like the same three cliches or would there be something else that has happened in the last 25 some years that people have maybe latched on to or would latch on to that she would not be impressed by?

I have one, but I want to see if you have anything.

Instagram followers?

That Don’t Impress Me Much.

Exactly.

Social media.

That’s exactly where I was going.

Your status as an influencer or something of that nature.

Yes, that’s where I was going to go.

That or your crypto portfolio.

Right.

Yeah, you know, I was watching the Shania documentary.

There’s a documentary on Netflix called Not Just a Girl, I think, that just came out a couple years ago.

And it was pretty interesting.

It was a summary of her career and that it was cool to kind of reminisce on her rise and everything.

But man, like a lot of the story was just about how resilient she was to kind of push through sexism in the industry and her own.

I mentioned losing her parents at a young age when she was just trying to sing in bars and build her music career from the ground up.

And becoming a mom also, like that was mentioned right in the middle, like right after her massive success.

She had to kind of scale it back and rely on her husband at the time, who’s now an ex-husband.

And she dealt with a lot of just obstacles and a lot of her story is about overcoming those obstacles and putting in the extra work to be successful in that world despite what she was faced with.

And maybe if there was a guy that prioritized her and said, you go and shoot for the stars, now maybe that wouldn’t be as much a part of her story.

But if Shania is listening, just so you know, Mick and I are taken, okay?

That ship has sailed.

Yes.

Yes, it has.

Yes, it has.

Well, as always, we appreciate you taking the time to join us as we break down how a specific song or artist has maybe impacted our life as a country music dad.

If you want to go back and listen to any of our previous episodes, you can find them at country music dads, wherever you find your podcasts.

Our website is the same countrymusictads.com.

We are pretty active on Instagram, country music dads again.

We do have a Facebook page as well, and we would love to hear your feedback about anything related to this episode or ideas for other episodes at countrymusictads.gmail.

All right, until next time.

Yeah, start off from where you want to start.

That’s the plan.

No rocket scientist.

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