“The Little Girl”
John Michael Montgomery
Written by Harley Allen
Radio & Records
#1 (4 weeks)
October 13 – November 3, 2000
Billboard
#1 (3 weeks)
October 28 – November 11, 2000
It’s hard to believe, but only a few days after covering the song that I named the worst single of the decade, the song ranked second on that list has now arrived.
As with “Yes!” I can also say I ranked “The Little Girl” incorrectly when I said it was the second worst single of the 2000s.
It should’ve topped the list. What a cloying, manipulative, and intellectually bankrupt exercise this is, literally rewriting an implausible viral email thread that’s been debunked by Snopes into a maudlin country song performed with so much seriousness by John Michael Montgomery that it’s stripped of even his modest strengths as an interpretive vocalist.
The idea that a young girl who watched her father kill his mother and then himself would identify Jesus from her Sunday School wall as the man who protected her that night kinda overlooks the fact that He could’ve done Mom a solid and protected her, too. And the beyond implicit suggestion that this girl was in danger because her parents were nonbelievers is pretty damn insidious, given the rampant rates of abuse in both Southern Baptist churches and foster homes. The little girl would be statistically safer at a drag queen brunch than surrounded by true believers.
I want to find some redeeming quality here, some sort of naivety that would make this record’s existence at least have value for those who need a pat on their head that their faith is good and those who don’t follow it are bad.
But then I just think about what it was like for Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer to hear this on the radio for nine months and I can’t even give it a D.
“The Little Girl” gets an F.
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Even in 2000, when I was all of 13, I was already aware of Snopes and I recall them first publishing an article about this song. They had a whole section debunking over-the-top manipulative motivational schlock that got forward via e-mail just like this. Nowadays it usually gets posted on Facebook instead, but the sentiment is the same.
There was this whole motivational/inspirational bent to a lot of songs at the turn of the millennium. I call it “Chicken Soup for the Soul Country”. Some of it I found anywhere from inoffensive to actually good. But this one was always the nadir of that trend to me, both then and now. I hated it not just because of its origins, but also because of the holes I could see in the story. (Of course, the one that bears repeating — Jesus wasn’t a white dude. Again, even at age 13, I knew that.) This was hands-down my least favorite single of 2000.
The sad part is, I’ve known too many people in my life who’ve spent great portions of their lives consuming media like this and ONLY like this, because it’s what they think Christianity is. It’s the same people who have never seen any movie other than those made by PureFlix. And I find it disgusting.
I know I evoked it last time I brought this song up, but I’ll quote my favorite Weird Al song: “No, I don’t want a bowl of Chicken Soup for the Soul / Stop forwarding that crap to me.”