Song Meaning
The lyrics paint a picture of a swaggering, almost cartoonish "Average Cowboy" who seems to exist in a heightened, violent version of the Old West. The narrator immediately establishes a sense of detached bravado, riding a horse with shoes and declaring an inability to use his feet, suggesting a life lived entirely on horseback and removed from ordinary concerns. This sets the stage for a world where bar fights and card games inevitably lead to someone losing, and where casual threats of duels are the norm.
The central tension arises from the juxtaposition of mundane activities like going to a bar with extreme violence. The casual mention of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, framed as a warning to "mom," injects a jarring historical note that amplifies the perceived danger of this "west." The narrator's declaration that "if you wanna mess with me / You're messing with the best" and the subsequent threat of a duel, culminating in "You're so dead meat," reveal a core identity built on aggressive posturing and a thrill-seeking embrace of conflict.
The craft here leans heavily on hyperbole and a deliberately simplistic, almost childlike, recounting of violent acts. The repetition of "Average Cowboy" in the chorus acts as a defiant, almost ironic, self-labeling, contrasting with the extreme actions described. The line "Takin' bullets in the head / But I'm not dead" is particularly striking, presenting a near-death experience not as a trauma, but as another boastful claim of invincibility in this steam-age, train-hijacking world.
Ultimately, these lyrics resonate through their sheer, unadulterated absurdity and the narrator's unwavering commitment to a persona of dangerous, unthinking toughness. The effectiveness comes from how the writing takes familiar Western tropes and pushes them to a ridiculous extreme, creating a character who is both menacing and comically over-the-top, reveling in a world where violence is just another form of entertainment.
