They make a big deal about songwriting in Nashville. The country music industry throws parties when a song hits Number One, banners crowing about chart success are staked in the yards of the publishing offices lining Music Row, and the craft itself is spoken about in hushed, reverent tones — even if that mystical art is sometimes just three dudes in a room trying to find a new word to rhyme with “beer.”
But some songwriters do in fact “brush the cheek of God,” as Tom Douglas describes the elusive goal in the superb new film Love, Tom. (It begins streaming February 24th on Paramount+.) Douglas is one of those divinely touched craftsmen, even if he’s too modest to admit it outright on camera. He opens up about nearly everything else, though, over the course of the movie’s 56 minutes: his father’s pill addiction and subsequent death; the life-changing moment a young…
