Dear Country Music: Please Stop Saying ‘Map Dot’ In Songs

Tim McGraw, I blame you for this. It's your fault. I have done some internet research and it appears that YOU are the very first person to do this in a country song. Now, nearly twenty years later, it seems to be on the verge of an epidemic. Why? Why, I ask you!!  Someone please explain to me why we're using the words "map dot" in country songs??

Okay, first. I feel like I have to let Tim off the hook a bit. In fairness, he didn't actually write the song "Where The Green Grass Grows." He's not the person who came up with the second verse of the song which says, "I'm from a map dot, a stop sign on a black top." He didn't write it (Jess Leary and Craig Wiseman did), but he sang it all the way to #1.

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Fast forward to 2020, when those horrible song lyrics reappeared. It's very fitting that the words "map dot" reinfected country music lyrics at the same time that a virus was basically shutting down the world. For that I blame Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani. Not only did they use the words "map dot" in a song, they used them in the freaking chorus of "Happy Anywhere". Because it was in the chorus, we had to listen to it over and over and over.

Seriously with this? "I could be happy anywhere! Any map dot location." Who talks like that?  I have an answer for you. No one. Literally, no one I know uses the words "map dot" in conversation. So, quit it. It's dumb.

But, again. I can't blame Blake and Gwen. They didn't write "Happy Anywhere". That dishonor goes to Ross Copperman, Josh Osborne, and Matt Jenkins.

But, to prove that there's still a fungus among us here in country music, yet another huge star has released a song that mentions a "map dot." And, I'll be honest with you. Those two words have stood in the way of me liking this song. Cody Johnson, are you really testing the limits of my love for you and your music?

Did we really need THIS line in THAT song? "I've been good-time drunk enough to be bad-time sober. Broke a map dot's heart when it appeared over my shoulder." What in the actual hell, Cody?

Who refers to somebody as a map dot? Again, the answer is NO ONE. So, let's circulate a memo to all the writer's rounds in Nashville. Actually, let's go one step further. Let's make it a Cease and Desist. QUIT USING THE WORDS 'MAP DOT' IN SONGS. It's literally driving me insane. If I hear it one more time, I'm going to be flipping a lamp on and off while sitting in the corner of some maximum-security psychiatric facility in an undisclosed map dot location.