Letter to My Penis by Rodney Carrington (1998)

Rodney Carrington, a stand-up from Longview, Texas, signed to Mercury Nashville and put this on his 1998 debut, Hangin' with Rodney. It is a weeper: acoustic guitar, a catch in the voice, and a first verse in which a man itemises the bad decisions his penis has talked him into, like a divorce settlement read aloud. The second verse is the answer, in which the penis points out who was holding whom. Both parties have a case. Neither has a lawyer.

It was released as a single and did not chart; the album reached number 73 on the country albums chart. Country radio did what country radio does with a song called Letter to My Penis, which is nothing, and it did not matter: the song became the staple of his live act and the one he is known for, by people who will never say the title out loud.

Its afterlife is as the exception. Country music has a deep catalogue of dirty songs about drinking, cheating and everything south of the belt except the belt's main tenant; Carrington wrote the one that is about it and nothing else. It is the only country entry on this list, and the reason the dirty-country collection people search for a thousand times a month cannot yet be built from phallic songs alone.