Clarissa, I'd love it if you could provide an example. I've exhausted most of my knowledge and find symbolism and metaphor but not double entendre. Admittedly, I don't listen to new country.
I Googled "word play in country music" and found this. It describes pretty well what I mean, and focuses in particular on George Jones, who I think is the guy who sang "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool," so I'm thinking he's not new country. I don't listen to country often, but when I do, I frequently notice - and enjoy - what this writer describes.
It also mentions Randy Travis, and it seems like the songs of his I've heard have word play in them, like "A Better Class of Losers." "On the Other Hand" is a perfect example: "On one hand I could stay and be your loving man/But the reason I must go is on the other hand," (meaning literally on that hand he wears a wedding ring).
(The bolding in the article that follows was made by me.)
http://aloxecorton.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/wordplay-in-the-country-for-amelie/"Pop singers like the Beatles and Elvis Costello may have visited wordplay from time to time, but country music lives there. A lot of it involves outright
puns, like the Bellamy Brothersā āIf I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me?ā or Lee Ann Womackās āAm I the Only Thing That Youāve Done Wrong?ā Thereās Gary Nicholsonās āBehind Bars,ā which is about saloons, and Randy Travisās āOn The Other Hand,ā which is about wedding rings. And then there are all those titles that involve
wordplay of one sort or another, like Dolly Partonās āItās All Wrong, but Itās All Right,ā and Johnny Paycheckās āIām the Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised.ā
When I think of songs like these, the singer who comes first to mind is George Jones. I donāt know of heās done more of them than anybody else ā the honors there probably go to Roger Miller or Johnny Paycheck. And a lot of the
punning titles that Jones uses are just routine
joke songs, like the recent āI Had More Silver Bullets Last Night Than the Lone Rangerā or āShe Took My Keys Away, and Now She Wonāt Drive me To Drink.ā But Jones has also made a specialty of using
puns and
wordplay in the plaintive ballads that he sings like no one else ā āA man can be a drunk sometimes but a drunk canāt be a man,ā āAt least Iāve learned to stand on my own two knees,ā or āWith these hundred proof memories, you canāt think and drive.ā
For some people of course, this sort of
punning just confirms a sense of country music as a linguistic trailer park. Since Tennysonās time,
punning has been deprecated as the basest form of humor, to the point where itās often regarded as a kind of veiled aggressiveness (ā¦) Itās a fitting device for these ballads, particularly when theyāre tackling their favorite theme ā the fragility of happiness, love, and family. Thereās a joke that sums up the genre very nicely: āWhat do you get if you play a country song backwards?ā ā āYou get your wife back, you get your dog back, you get your truck backā¦ā
Taken from āThe way we talk nowā by Geoffrey Nunberg (Houghton Mifflin, 2001)