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By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 17, 2002; Page C01

The best-selling country song in America for the past month isn't about a busted romance or cheatin' hearts. It isn't about loneliness, wanderlust, cowboys or even pickup trucks.

It's about one of the difficulties of interpersonal communication, specifically the male-female kind.

Even more specifically, it's a good-natured ditty with a scathing subtext not often expressed in song or polite conversation: Ladies, you talk about yourselves too much.

Toby Keith's rendition of "I Wanna Talk About Me" seems to have struck a chord, and a nerve, in the eternally embattled world of relationships. Some women are put off by its depiction of a self-absorbed woman, while some men find it refreshingly frank. One critic (a guy, natch) called it "a male liberation anthem."

"Talk" is a kind of country rap that Keith performs rapid-fire in his distinctive Oklahoma twang. Written from a man's point of view (by Bobby Braddock, a veteran Nashville tunesmith), the song catalogues a series of one-sided conversational topics that are enough to make a man's eyes roll:

We talk about your friends and the places that you've been

We talk about your skin and the dimples on your chin

The polish on your toes and the run in your hose

And God knows we're gonna talk about your clothes

Depending on your perspective, the chorus is either a justified demand for equal time or the response of an egotistical jerk: "I wanna talk about me / Wanna talk about I / Wanna talk about number one . . . "

"Talk" remains one of the most requested songs on country radio stations, and was No. 1 on Billboard's country singles chart for five weeks, before being dislodged recently by Alan Jackson's Sept. 11-themed "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)." The song's video is the most played on cable's Country Music Television network.

The record may hold an odd distinction: It could be the first No. 1 country song to refer to menstruation. At one point in his litany of her topics, Keith sings, "We talk . . . about your medical charts and when you start," giving a sly read to the last phrase.

A former pro football player turned mega-selling country crooner (and sometime long-distance phone-service pitchman), Keith acknowledges that some critics and listeners can't stand the song, either for its lyrics, its music or its take on gender roles. He's aware that "Talk," released in the fall, has probably made as many 10 Worst year-end lists as 10 Best lists.

All of which is fine by him: "The secret in this business," he says, "is to make enough people hate you enough to get them to talk about you."

In fact, Keith says, a little sexual provocation can go a long way. His big hit of 2000, "How Do You Like Me Now?!," is about a successful musician (Keith, presumably) who throws his success back in the face of a woman who rejected him in high school. "People said, 'Seventy-five percent of the listeners are female; you can't talk down to them that way,' " he recalls. "Well, women loved that song. Every woman who ever mentioned it to me said, 'That was really sassy.' "

He decided to record Braddock's song, he says, because he figured it might stir up a similar fuss. "I thought it was uncompromising and humorous and has attitude," Keith says. "I bet it has inspired a lot of conversations."

Radio personality Don Geronimo, who has played the song on his nationally syndicated "Don & Mike" talk show, first heard "Talk" before Christmas when his son played it for him. Now he plays it constantly in his car on the way to work.

"It's funny as hell, but parts of it ring really true for me," says Geronimo, who has been married for 20 years. "Who hasn't sat down with their wife or girlfriend, and you listen, and you want to listen, and you try to listen, and a lot of times you end up pretending to listen.

"Look," he adds, "my wife is wonderful. But when I ask her a question, it would be nice if she could condense the answer. All I want is the first and last paragraph, and not all the details in between. That, in essence, is what I pray for in my life."

Here's a little secret, though: Women know when their men are feigning interest. Geronimo's wife, Freda, says she can tell when she's lost her audience. "It's [that way] when I'm talking to a girlfriend," she says, " . . . and it's certainly [clear] when I've lost my husband's attention."

And here's another little secret: Women fake it, too. "You do pretend a little bit," she adds. "When he starts talking about football, I tried to refrain from giving him the same [bored] look."

The character in "I Wanna Talk About Me" professes no boredom, but he's certainly impatient. He's willing to indulge his Significant Other but only up to a point: "I like talking about you you you, usually / but occasionally, I wanna talk about me."

Well, at least he's got something to say. Country star Lee Ann Womack recently weighed in with a woman's perspective on the male-female conversational dynamic. In Jamie O'Hara's "You've Got to Talk to Me," she takes on men and their confounding emotional inarticulateness.

How will I ever know what you're feeling

How will I ever know what to do

If you simply refuse to tell me

What's going on inside of you

(To hear a free Sound Bite of "I Wanna Talk About Me," call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8153.)