My heart went achy breaky yesterday afternoon, while having dinner. My cool 5 year old daugther has started to get into this Hannah Montana phenomenon. OK, she's not exactly colouring her hair blond and she doesn't have all the 3 million HM accessories, but she REALLY loves her songs. So, my wife and I decided to rent the latest HM pandemic movie last weekend and our daughter was over the moon screaming "Awwwwesoooom!".
It's a happy feel good movie with little or no story, somewhat shallow, but through and through a happy movie - and some catchy pop and country tunes. As you know Hannah Montana is actually Miley Cyrus, the daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who sang 'achy breaky heart' in the early 90s.
So, in the movie Hannah (Miley) goes back to her roots, which is laughable in the first place as she is only 15 years old, to spend a couple of weeks in hillbilly country. Nobody, except her closest family actually knows she's Hannah Montana. She has this blond magic wig that makes everybody believe she's Hannah and blinds them from seeing the truth - she is Miley! I wouldn't mind one of those wigs once in a while, but just for the weekends of course. Imagine sitting in a meeting, with a magic wig, hearing things people might be saying about you.
The legend Billy Ray plays the dad in the movie and gives a couple of guest performances, as you do to promote yourself, and they were actually fairly catchy - especially "Back to Tennessee". My wife even closed her eyes and swirled away to the sound of Billy's voice.
My son was dancing in the sofa, clapping his hands to the rhythm and singing along. He absolutely enjoyed Billy Ray's performance and I'm certain that he would have a blast at a real line dance hoedown. In fact, all four of us, and probably the dogs too, would enjoy a real American barn party; line dancing, country music, creasy BBQ and cowboys/cowgirls - that'll be fun. Bring it on, yeeha!
Anyway, during dinner, we played the songs on the Mac (iTunes) and I hummed along to the chrorus of the "Back to Tennessee" song. I didn't know the lyrics, but that has never stopped me from singing what I think they are singing.
Suddenly my daughter stared at me..."Dad, you are NOT Hannah's dad!, please don't sing anymore".
I was stunned and asked her if she didn't like my voice, whereto she replied diplomatically "Yeah, but please don't sing anymore". Somewhat distraught, I asked her again why I couldn't sing, and she simply replied "Ok, sing then, sing! Come on dad, sing!".
That freaked me out and I got stagefright. I'm not going to do the X-factor trials. I'm stuck singing in the shower only, to the amusement of the neighbours. Country is nice, at times, but not when performed by me.
