Pontiac

“If I Had a Boat,” the opening song on Lyle Lovett’s 1987 sophomore album, Pontiac, shows what makes Lovett so good at writing songs about things no one else would think of to begin with. A daydream about Roy Rogers atop his horse in the middle of the ocean becomes a song about man’s desire for autonomy and infinite space. An image of a New Jersey woman running barefoot at night becomes the penultimate portrayal of the rodeo life (“Walk Through the Bottomland”). A casual glance at the TV Guide becomes a living memory of the old flame you never forgot (“Black and Blue”). The other element of Lovett’s art is his undying belief in the importance of nonsense, as passed down to him through canonical Texan songwriters like Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills. While some of his peers tended to overwrite songs, Lovett was happy to take a break from poetic songcraft to find the poetry in the spell-it-out songwriting of “M-O-N-E-Y” and “She’s Hot to Go,” which has a refrain as whimsically vulgar as anything a rap star could summon.