Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? - Paula Cole
I heard this again the other day, and it's been stuck in my mind. I feel like I understand it so much more now that I'm older than I was when it came out.
This song was HUGE in 1997-1998. The song alone won 3 grammys.
What's it about? The lyrics can be found here, but she repeats the following lines in 3 choruses:
Where is my John Wayne
Where is my prairie song
Where is my happy ending
Where have all the cowboys gone
An LA Times article, from 1997, titled "Paula Cole: All Fired Up", describes the lyrics:
In fact, the generally soft-spoken, sweet-faced singer insists that “Cowboys” was intended as an ironic study of the gender stereotypes that continue to plague us even in the more-politically-correct-than-thou ‘90s.
“The story in the song isn’t about me,” Cole, 29, points out. “It’s about a sort of everywoman, and I’m looking at her life--compassionately, I hope--and saying that, as much as we think we’re progressing, there’s still work to be done. For me, [the lyrics are] sarcastic. But it’s amazing how different people interpret the song, how many different levels of consciousness there are out there. I like the fact that people apply their own meaning to the song.”
In a 1998 article from The Baltimore Sun title, "Don't Fence Her In Singer Paula Cole and "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" have been branded as anti-feminist. Ain't so, ma'am. You can do the dishes, while she goes to get her Grammys", the song is described as follows:
Far from being a monument to Marlboro Man macho, "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" is a sly, sarcastic complaint, one that mouths the cliches of the traditional wife and helpmate to show how empty and unfulfilling the role can be.
Or, as the protagonist puts it later in the song, "I will do the dishes/While you go have a beer."
Cole admits that a lot of people miss the barbs built into her lyric, and thus misread it. "It is kind of delicate," she says. "There is a melancholy woven in there, and there is the honesty of the story of a woman who was disappointed in her marriage."
