TVSquad

Every season I get sucked into watching Nashville Star by the simple fact that I love cover songs. From the truly great ones like Hendrix doing "All Along The Watchtower" or Soundgarden's incredible spin on Black Sabbath's "Into The Void," right on through to the absurdly obscure, like Shakira playing "Back In Black," they're all good. For me, Nashville Star is just a big weekly collection of odd covers.

It's with that thought process that I was tuned in again this week, when something caught my ear. Ashlee Hewitt's (pictured) first performance was the classic Steve Miller Band tune, "Take The Money And Run." There was one odd little exception though. Your years of classic rock radio should have taught you that Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue were "two young lovers with nothing better to do, than sit around the house, get high, and watch the tube." Suddenly this week, they changed to "two young lovers, with nothing better to do, than sit around the house, sit around, and watch the tube." That just isn't right. See for yourself, after the jump.

Now, I put the question mark in the post title because I haven't seen anything that confirms those changes are being handed down by the peacock standards and practices drones. It's not a big leap if you want to jump to that conclusion, but there are other possible explanations. Certainly, it could be a choice that was made by Ashlee Hewitt, but that just seems like such an odd choice. And, of course, it's worth pointing out that no matter who made the decision, they excised a throw away drug reference while happily including the line about Billy Joe shooting a man while robbing his castle. That's thinking of the children.

I can't help but be taken back to 1967 when The Doors appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. As the story goes, before the show the band was warned that Sullivan didn't want the word "higher" used when they performed "Light My Fire." The boys in the band all readily agreed to that stipulation, and then proceeded to completely ignore it as they performed the song exactly as they always did. The beauty of live TV. Let's watch it again.

The difference being that if in fact the powers that be are dictating lyrics on Nashville Star, the just getting started Ashlee Hewitt doesn't have the same options that Jim Morrison had at that time. It's not anything that's going to kill the show, but it really feels like a poor battle to pick. I think Nashville Star is actually a good show, and one that can use all the good press that it can get. Things like this just seem to be inviting a negative reaction. Or maybe I'm just listening too closely, and too attached to the records of my youth.