Yesterday in the warehouse I threw on CCR Radio on Spotify. The playlist was cycling through some expected tunes like Listen to the Music, Born on the Bayou, Take the Money and Run, etc. until I heard not one, but TWO songs I’d never heard before. And you know what? Both absolutely kicked ass.

Jim Croce – You Don’t Mess Around With Jim – 1972

What a song. The story of Big Jim, a pool hustler who messes around with the wrong south Alabama country boy Willie McCoy, AKA Slim. For such a simple story, it’s captivating, super catchy / bluesy, and has great story telling,

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Glen Campbell – Southern Nights – 1977

Who the fuck is Glen Campbell! This song IMMEDIATELY hooks you and doesn’t stop for 3 minutes. It’s excellent. Listen to it in the car with the windows down and who knows, maybe even grow your hair out like that cuck above.

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Why Am I Posting These?

Clearly, these songs are similar. Both are catchy and southern in nature; but more they inspire a sort of nostalgia for a time and place that I will never see, and that makes me a little bit sad.

I’m going to try this out, as, ironically, I’ve been trying to work ChatGPT more into my life. Aside from that previous paragraph, I’m having a hard time expressing exactly WHY these two songs are hitting me, and here’s what ChatGPT gave me.

Back then, life felt a little more raw, a little more unpolished.

• The scrappy pool halls, full of cigarette smoke and hustlers, have been replaced by corporate sports bars with neon signs and flat screens. The myth of guys like Jim—who ran the town until someone bigger knocked them down—feels like an old story that doesn’t happen anymore. There aren’t many places left where reputations are built face to face, where a name really means something beyond a username or a brand.
  
• And Southern Nights—that image of a young couple walking down an old dirt road under the glow of fireflies? That kind of quiet, magical simplicity feels almost impossible now. Today, they’re probably inside, scrolling through TikTok on opposite sides of the couch, half-watching Netflix while texting their friends. Even if they went outside, the world doesn’t feel as still anymore—there’s always a buzz, a notification, a distraction.

It’s not just about technology, though. It’s about the way life feels different. The world in those songs is a little more handmade, a little more human-sized. People weren’t so plugged in; they were just there, in the moment, because there wasn’t anywhere else to be.

It’s easy to get nostalgic for that, even if you never lived it. The past isn’t just gone—it feels like it can’t exist anymore. And that’s what makes it feel so far away.

The last line stands out most to me, that the past isn’t just gone, it feels like it can’t exist anymore.

But at least we have the history, art, music, etc. from those times, as well as www.splittingtens.com, so they never fully die.