United Breaks Guitars

I woke up to this the other morning, thanks to my clock radio being tuned to the eclectic local community radio station. Seems this young country singer from Nebraska had an unpleasant run-in with United Airlines, whose baggage handlers mistreated and broke the guitar he'd checked. They stonewalled him and refused his claim for compensation, and so he took his revenge with this catchy and altogether charming song:



So that's got eight and a half million hits on YouTube now. Fight the system! You know what turns out to be a great aesthetic for corporate protest music, is country. Regretful, wounded pride carries just the right resonance.

I believe this mostly got popular on YouTube several months ago, but I'm a bit slow to pick up on viral videos. As in, this is the first viral video I've picked up on since I don't even remember when, and I heard about it from AM radio.

If I remember the end of the story right, United came crawling back to the guy after a while, offering to replace the guitar if he took the video down. But Taylor had already given him a new guitar, so the music lives on.