Would you rather have been a Beatle, or have walked on the moon?

Winston on the moon.

“Cookie!”

I wasn't there but it seems like after the Beatles and the moon landing, nobody wanted to be a cowboy anymore. I think that's sad and I feel bad for the hypothetical horses that would-be Beatles and spacemen would have loved and cared for. I would choose cowboy because then I would get to spend my life with the horses. I would give them kisses and brush their hair.

jon bon jovi wanted to be a cowboy, afaik he still does

Sting: the only person in the world who didn't have to choose in this poll

xp he wanted to be a Beatle, that horse is just a metaphor for a tour bus :(

was there not a massive video game / hit song / tiktok phenom recently driven by kids wanting to be cowboys?

and weren't 3/4 of US acid bands pretending to be cowboys by 1969?

anyway neither of these options sound like fun and no one involved in either seemed to be very happy

I think Phil Collins still wants to be a cowboy. Shitbird has the largest collection of Davy Crockett artefacts than possibly in any museum in the US stashed in his basement. I don't think that even works as a tax fiddle either.

See also, Bruce Springsteen.
Step 1: Learn to play Twist and Shout
Step 2: Profit
Step 3: Horses!

was there not a massive video game / hit song / tiktok phenom recently driven by kids wanting to be cowboys?

hooray!

and weren't 3/4 of US acid bands pretending to be cowboys by 1969?

i think they mostly wanted to get high and dress like the quicksilver messenger service, but idk

anyway neither of these options sound like fun and no one involved in either seemed to be very happy

Shitbird has the largest collection of Davy Crockett artefacts than possibly in any museum in the US stashed in his basement.

See also, Bruce Springsteen.
Step 1: Learn to play Twist and Shout
Step 2: Profit
Step 3: Horses!

Those 3 things are true

phil collins is a #horsegirl

yes, yes he is

i deeply admire this revive but just need to point out, cowboys never loved horses, horse girls have always been the ones who loved horses.

What?? How could anyone not love horses?

Bruce has written so many songs that are positively gasoline-scented, this would be a surprising turn if he wasn't Bruce Springsteen

In this country you often have to be rich to have the opportunity to love horses; for all Bruce's working-class solidarity, he also has that thing where people who grew up poor and then made lots of money want to spend it on things that mark them as belonging to the class they have moved up into; horses work great for this because most of the people who love them as adults also had access to them as kids. I'm sure this is all subconscious but I bet its a factor.

1. Yes
2. Yes, but that's like saying you have to be Californian to have the opportunity to love surfing. One can dream.

Gr8 post tho as usual

thank you! great revive.

If no one wanted to be a cowboy anymore, then why was this a hit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Jmo3yGrSg

Because it was 1982?

I think Phil Collins still wants to be a cowboy. Shitbird has the largest collection of Davy Crockett artefacts than possibly in any museum in the US stashed in his basement. I don't think that even works as a tax fiddle either.

I'm almost sure he was also boasting he had the original Bowie Knife on the BBC radio program about Davy Crockett where he talked about his collection. It sounded a bit like the sorry fables of a gullible rich sucker to me tbh

If no one wanted to be a cowboy anymore, then why was this a hit?

Such a big hit that I've never heard of it despite having spent my childhood reading rock encyclopedias, tbf

And yes, Phil Collins's collection of Alamo memorabilia is legendary.

I am relieved that nobody posted the awful Dallas Cowboys record from the 90's.

lmao at “I wanna be a cowboy” wowww

Heh, apparently "peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1986 and charted around the world." I definitely heard it in the radio as a kid around the same time stuff like Falco was on the radio, too. A little more than ten years later, Paula Cole was asking "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?", so I guess, yeah, the cowboy resurgence failed to take off. Of course, a couple of years after *that* "Dances With Wolves" won seven Oscars, but two years after *that* Unforgiven won four, and given "Unforgiven" was kind of about the death of the cowboy myth, pretty certain that it killed off cowboys for good. I remember seeing it with a bunch of goons I was working with over the summer on a day-off, and I recall all of them complaining it was not the kind of Clint Eastwood movie they wanted to see. You could say they metaphorically threw in their hats after that, because not a single one of them ever mentioned wanting to be a cowboy ever again.

Lonesome Dove had a lot to do with it

But let's not forget the role "Urban Cowboy" and of course the huge, ubiquitous, never forgotten Disney Robert Redford smash "The Electric Cowboy" played keeping cowboys a thing in the early '80s.

And of course the "You Shook Me All Night Long" music video.

how soon we forget...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOYZaiDZ7BM

Were they cowboys, or just hillbillies?

JiC, I assume you mean The Electric Horseman? not a Disney movie, but a pretty good "where have all the cowboys gone" movie, though politically suspect with its a proto-Reaganist, Marlboro-manny "what America and its Career Women need is some rugged cowboys" energy

yeah, that one, lol

xp to myself: To be fair to Bruce, his interest in cowboys/desire to be a cowboy goes all the way back to his pre-E. Street days when he wrote songs like "Cowboys of the Sea" (what it sounds like, they live underwater and herd the fishes and also rob banks, idk what he was on either.) And then there's "This Hard Land," his epic gay cowboy fantasy from the eighties, and "Black Cowboys" from the nineties, and most of Western Stars, and all in all, Bruce's cowboy dreams clearly go deep, it wasn't fair of me to imply he was some jumped-up, fly-by-night, johnny-come-lately cowboy wannabe.

wait, no, Black Cowboys was from Devils & Dust. Point still stands.

Also, the "little Texas" aspect of Freehold.

In Forest Hills, Queens, where I lived for a year in 2009-2010, there's a stable called GallopNYC where anyone may schedule 30 minutes to visit the horses regardless of ability to pay. Most of their horses are retired and tend toward a mild temperament in their old age, so they are prized as therapy animals. They have lovely names, like 'Popcorn'.
Ordinarily, the place is crowded, loud and chatoic, but during the pandemic it's been blissfully tranquil.

Since my last visit, I've imagined a colony of these gentle horses in a bucolic place where they are free and undisturbed, like a utopia, a world of only horses. That's what I try to think about when I go to bed at night.

I think my initial post made it fairly clear that I couldn't care less about actual cowboys, you know, it's the loss of all those cowboy dreams.

I Couldn’t Care Less About Actual Cowboys (It’s the Loss of All Those Cowboy Dreams)

It's the companion horses who maybe only existed in the imaginations of children, who were cruelly cast aside when they saw those spectacular images of the moon landing and changed plans.

Honestly, i think i'd be ok with them deciding to dream about going to the moon if they'd wanted to bring their horse.