Songs of love and death
Let’s bring everybody down a bit with love songs about death (though the final song should resurrect some mirth). To me the song of death will always be Julie Covington’s Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, the last record my mother and father listened to together before his sudden death in 1977. My mother would play the record at high volume for months after. This selection is about the kind of loss my mother felt. Some can, or even do, apply to the loss of somebody other than a lover. And, no, the notorious Honey does not feature.
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Missy Higgins – The Sound Of White.mp3
This entirely gorgeous song is not about the death of a love interest, but about that of Melissa’s sister in a car crash. The sisterly love must have been profound — as deep as that of romantic lovers (which is why this song works for them too). “My silence solidifies, until that hollow void erases you so I can’t feel at all. But if I never feel again, at least that nothingness will end the painful dream, of you and me…”
Although not religious, Missy goes to a church, presumably Catholic, to pray before a statue of the Virgin Mary. “I knelt before some strangers face, I’d never have the courage or belief to trust this place. But I dropped my head, ’cause it felt like lead, and I’m sure I felt your fingers through my hair.” That physical contact is, of course, just an illusion. All that’s left are the memories: “And if I listen to the sound of white [presumably meaning a state of blankness or meditation] sometimes I hear your smile and breathe your light.”
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Death Cab For Cutie – I’ll Follow You Into The Dark.mp3
Ben Fold in his song The Luckiest – possibly the greatest love song ever written – tells the story about his neighbour, an “old man who lived to his 90s” and one day dies in his sleep. His wife lives on for a couple of days and then follows him. The notion of not being able to live without a loved one is the point of this song, performed by a singer much younger than 90. He sets out his stall early: “Love of mine, some day you will die. But I’ll be close behind, I’ll follow you into the dark.” There are hints of suicide should the tragic moment come, and that point may be imminent, suggesting the presence of a terminal illness. “You and me have seen everything to see from Bangkok to Calgary, and the soles of your shoes are all worn down. The time for sleep is now. It’s nothing to cry about, ’cause we’ll hold each other soon – the blackest of rooms.”
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Iron & Wine – Naked As We Came.mp3
Musically and lyrically a companion piece to I’ll Follow You Into The Dark, Sam Beam is pondering the death of a lover: “One of us will die inside these arms. Eyes wide open, naked as we came, one will spread our ashes ’round the yard.” The instructions have been given: cremation, no burial, just scatter the ashes. “She says, ‘If I leave before you, darling, don’t you waste me in the ground.”
That notion corresponds with my postmortal plan: bury my ashes into a hole in the garden, and plant a fruit tree over me. The idea comes from a German poem by Theodor Fontane, apparently based on a true story, I learnt as a child, about a Herr von Ribbeck in the Havelland (near Berlin), who’d give passing schoolchildren a pear from his tree. As his death approaches, in 1759, he gives instruction that a pear tree be planted over his grave, because his miserly son would not continue the distribution of fruit. His final wish is honoured, and generations of passing children will now help themselves to a pear (at least until the tree’s destruction in 1911), thanks to Herr von Ribbeck. (English translation of the poem)
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Anna Ternheim – Lovers Dream.mp3
Swedish songbird Ternheim rounds off the trilogy of not wanting to live when the other has died. The twist here seems to be that she wants to be in death with someone whom she could not be with in life. “Maybe I could be yours, maybe you could be mine. God, I waited so long, maybe my time has come to walk by your side. Please put me at ease, now my soul is ready for peace.” Which is a twist on the saying, “See you in the next life.”
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Bobbie Gentry – Ode To Billie Joe.mp3
This song can be interpreted in several ways. We know that Billy Joe MacAllister committed suicide by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge on Choctaw Ridge. For Bobbie’s family it seems to be the stuff of casual dinner conversation: “Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense. Pass the biscuits, please”. And so the conversation goes, except Bobbie seems to have lost her appetite entirely when mother mentions something uncanny: “”That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today. Said he’d be pleased to have dinner on Sunday. Oh, by the way, he said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge, and she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Shortly we leave the dining table and fast forward a year as Bobbie updates us. “A year has come ‘n’ gone since we heard the news ’bout Billy Joe. And brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo. There was a virus going ’round, Papa caught it and he died last spring, and now Mama doesn’t seem to wanna do much of anything. And me, I spend a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge – and drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge.” We can only guess what Billie Joe was to Bobbie, and why Billie Joe committed suicide. A popular theory has it that what the preacher saw them throwing off the bridge was their baby (though how blind must the parents have been to fail noticing their daughter’s pregnancy?) or a premature, self-administered abortion. Whatever it is, Bobbie’s grief – for Billie Joe or her putative child – runs deep.
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Ari Hest – Didn’t Want To Say Goodbye.mp3
Apparently written about a 9/11 victim, singer-songwriter Ari Hest does what most grieving people do when confronted with a sudden, unnatural death – asking why. And for those with religious faith, it can be shaken by such an event, as seems to be the case here. “I can ask all I please, I can beg down on my knees, for a reason, for a sign. But these answers I won’t find.” So instead, “I’ll go on without you, and what’s left for me to do but to stay where I am in my world of pretend.”
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Loudon Wainwright III – Sometimes I Forget.mp3
The song starts off unpromisingly as Loudon sets the scene: “Sometimes I forget that you’ve gone. You’ve gone, and you’re not coming back.” But we quickly learn that he has not been dumped as he surveys the scene: “And your bookcase still holds all your books; it’s as if all you’ve done is go out of town…” The addressee could be returning any minute now, but the person — my guess it’s his father, so let’s identify him as such —never went on a journey. “But your suitcase is empty, it’s right here in the hall. That’s not even the strangest thing. Why would you leave your wallet behind. Your glasses, your wristwatch and ring.” He has unresolved issues with his father, having failed to say what needed to be said. Death creates a distance, but Loudon feels his father’s proximity. “You’re not far away, you’re near. Sometimes I forget that you’ve gone. Sometimes it feels like you’re right here. Right now it feels like you’re right here.” Wainwright does not specify the nature of his relationship to the deceased, so it can be applied, at least in spirit, to a separation by death of any loved one.
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Richard Thompson – Vincent Black Lightning 1952.mp3
Turning the teen death genre (which we’ll turn to in the next item) on its head a little, Thompson tells the story of an outlaw in love. James Adie, a criminal, and Red Molly fell in love over the eponymous motorbike. Then the day comes that James robs a bank and is shot by the police. Red Molly is called to his deathbed. James declares his love for Molly and the bike, then “he reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys, saying: ‘I’ve got no further use for these. I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome swooping down from heaven to carry me home’. And he gave her one last kiss and died, and he gave her his Vincent to ride.”
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Jimmy Cross – I Want My Baby Back.mp3
I promised that we’d end off with a much-needed laugh. The early ’60s were a fertile period for teen death songs such as The Leader Of The Pack, Tell Laura I Love Her, Teen Angel, Dead Man’s Curve, Run Joey Run, and Ebony Eyes. Jimmy Cross’ 1964 song is a parody that moves swiftly from the ridiculous to the bizarre.
Jimmy fills us in on that fateful night, putting on his best Ferlin Husky accent: “I don’t hardly know where to begin. I remember, we were cruisin’ home from the Beatles concert. I’d had such a wonderful evenin’ sittin’ there watchin’ my baby screamin’ and tearin’ her hair out and carryin’ on. She was sooo full of life. Then…” disaster strikes. “I see this stalled car right smack in front of me! Well, I wa’nt about to slam on the brakes ’cause I didn’t have none to start to with. So I swerved to the left, and what do I see? Some mush-head, on a motorsickle, headin’ right at us! And I knew at last, me and my baby were about to meet the leader of the…” CRASH! “Well, when I come to I looked around, and there was the leader, and there was the pack, and over there was my baby.” Time flies, and he still misses his baby. So, punning unsubtly, he takes a spade and digs up her grave and, lo, he has his baby back. Oh blessed joy – a happy, necrophiliac ending!
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In this series so far:
Love hurts
Unrequited love
Being in love
Longing for love
Heartbreak
Adultery
Annika Norlin has been cheated on with a thin blonde “with a peanut for a brain and volleyballs for chest”. Worse yet, the dude did the dirty deed “with Miss Non-Bitterness” in her apartment. But, bastard dumped, Annika is getting over it by way of carthasis: “Now, this will be the last bitter song. It will be my last, real bitter song about you.” She will find new themes: “From now on, I’ll write about flowers and butterflies, chickens and kittens and shit.” And she’ll “try to find someone who knows I exist”. Which is the best kind of therapy. And, look, it’s working: “I’m feeling cheerful already. I’d like to break his neck, if I may. But most, I’d like to cut off that hair, and cut off that head, and cut off those volleyballs, and I hope she gets her heart broken, and I hope she turns bitter, really really bitter – like me.”
Oh, what a set-up. Jim is on the phone with his woman, who presently is in the company of another man. Reeves has her on the phone, establishing a sense of intimacy and communicating instant forgiveness: “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone, let’s pretend that we’re together all alone. I’ll tell the man to turn the juke box way down low”. And then he goes for the jugular: “And you can tell your friend there with you he’ll have to go.” He wants an answer now though: “Though love is blind, make up your mind. I’ve got to know – should I hang up or will you tell him he’ll have to go?” No whining, nor sulking, nor recriminations. Make up your mind, woman, and when you do, of course he’ll have to go. 
Jim Reeves is willing to trust again, but that commodity is extinct when Nicole’s man cheats on her. “I know you and you are bound to stray. It’s a foul of men – they swear that they’ll never hurt you again, then give their best shots”, but if that is to no avail, “my heart you won’t have it again, so just don’t try.” The relationship will not be healed and it will be over. There won’t be a point in trying to mend it: “Don’t pull over, just kill the headlights.”
It is fair to presume that the beautiful Kelis will not take back the perfidious scoundrel who cheated on her. She is not well disposed towards him, as the line “I hate you so much right now” may suggest. But, from Kelis’ side of the story, one empathises with her. What she didn’t do for him? “Held you when you were sick, even sucked your dick” (which, if both ministrations were performed simultaneously, would require soundtracking by Marvin Gaye’s last big hit). Now it’s revenge time on the lying swine. Going one better on Carrie, “I’ll set your truck to flames, and watch it blow up.” Then comes the taunt: “Tell me: How you go’n see her now?” Aaaaaaarrrrgh!!!!!
Smokey is the prince of broken hearts. And here, the heartache is of his own making. He cheated and got dumped. “I did you wrong. My heart went out to play, but in the game I lost you. What a price to pay! Hey I’m crying.” Now he tearfully wants her back: “I’m just about at the end of my rope, but I can’t stop trying. I can’t give up hope, ’cause I feel that one day I’ll hold you near, whisper ‘I still love you’.” In the interim, “until that day is here – I’m crying.” Would you take him back?
I could have chosen any number of versions of Jolene, from Dolly Parton’s original to the delightful Strawberry Switchblade version. It is heartbreaking how the singer humbles herself before the beautiful Jolene, with her ivory skin, emerald eyes and smile “like a breath of spring”. She knows she has lost her man, who keeps saying Jolene’s name in his sleep. Her only hope is that Jolene might dump him, and so she appeals for her rival’s mercy (and, possibly, self-sacrifice). There’s some point-missing going on: “You could have your choice of men, but I could never love again. He’s the only one for me, Jolene. I had to have this talk with you. My happiness depends on you .” 
Shirley phones Barbara to warn her off her “old man”. “It’s only fair that I let you know that the man you’re in love with – he’s mine.” Not only does she pay for his clothes and car, but she “loves that man”. And, like Jolene, Barbara is being asked to end it for the sake of her lover’s wife. “Woman to woman, if you’ve ever been in love, then you know how I feel. And, woman to woman, now, if you were in my shoes, wouldn’t you have done the same thing too.” So she warns: “I ain’t gonna let you break up my happy home.” 
Happy? Really? Barbara responds to that in her own song, and it doesn’t look like Shirley’s begging and threats have had any effect, as the title already proclaims. She might not be above to satisfy his material needs, but she can give what he really wants: “I can give him love”. As far as Barbara is concerned, the nameless sap has already made his choice and his bed: “He spent last night with me, where he wanted to be.” So the guy has the choice between a woman with whom he has great sex and a wife who provides all the material comforts. Knowing that Mason’s lyrics were written by a man, how do you think the story will end? 
“Sunshine, blue skies, please go away. My girl has found another and gone away. With her went my future, my life is filled with gloom, so day after day I stayed locked up in my room. I know to you it might sound strange, but I wish it would rain.” Motown lyrics are pure poetry. “Day in, day out, my tear-stained face pressed against the window pane. My eyes search the skies desperately for rain, ’cause raindrops will hide my teardrops, and no one will ever know that I’m cryin’. When I go outside to the world outside, my tears I refuse to explain. Oh, I wish it would rain.” Promise me you will punch them.
The unaccountably obscure Tibault in his song from 2000 acknowledges that he was dumped for being a bit of an ass (“And everything about me drags her down”), and he now pretends, Smokey-like, not to be affected by the break-up. But he really still loves her (“She moves around me like the air I breathe, gets inside of me and she never leaves”) and wants her back: “Someday I’ll find my way back in; somehow I’ll cross that bridge again. And then I won’t have to pretend to be unbroken.”
A very jaunty number for so sad a lament wrapped up in nautical metaphors. Since she “sailed away” there are no lights in the harbour and ships lost at sea all because Don is crying so much, he is “on this sea of tears – sea of heartbreak”. He tried to woo her back with another maritime call: “Oh, what I’d give to sail back to shore, back to your arms once more.” Poor Don, chances are that another man has put down his anchor in the good ship ex-girlfriend.
You know what it’s like when a song comes on that reminds you of an ex-partner (or, worse, of the break-up itself)? In this rather quirky tune, Sugar Ray bemoan not only the loss of a girlfriend, but also the diminishing delight in the things they used to enjoy together: “All the songs she used to sing, all the favourite TV shows have gone out the window.” It’s worse than that. Not only does he no longer enjoy re-runs of Friends or whatever, but when he does catch one, the old feelings for her return. Which calls to mind Hal David’s lyrics for Always Something There To Remind Me: “I passed a small café where we would dance at night, and I can’t help recalling how it felt to kiss and hold you tight. Oh, how can I forget you, when there is always something there to remind me…” The version posted here is a 1982 cover by the English synth-pop duo Naked Eyes, featuring the late Rob Fisher, later of Climie Fisher. Burt Bacharach once said their version was his favourite…
The Bee Gees asked for pointers in mending broken hearts. One way of doing so is to enter into a loving relationship with somebody new who will take care of you. In this song, Amy Rigby found such a man, one who’d do anything for her. But sometimes even that doesn’t work, when there remains so much residual anger that the contemptible ex still dominates emotions. In this instance, the new man in Amy’s life wrecklessly* offers to “shoot the dude who screwed me up”. Amy responds that she is “trying so hard to forgive”. With that in mind, “Here’s his address, here’s his picture, here’s the make and model of his car. He works until 4:30, then he hangs out at the topless bar with a girl on each arm.” Amy reminds the new paramour: “Remember how he cheated and he lied to me. You told me that it makes you lose your head… I don’t believe you’d do those things you said.” And did she mention they’re pouring concrete on Route 33? But if he does the things he said he’d do (and here’s the address and a photo), he must not tell her, but keep it to himself. Then Amy sighs: “I like the way that you take care of me. I like the way you that you’ll take care of things.” Hell hath no fury etc. (* google it)
The Smiths canon is brimming with songs about Morrissey’s unlovability. He doesn’t even get rejected; he just can’t find the right person to reject him (and when a girl comes on to him, as one does in Never Had No One Ever, he can’t even get “sorrow’s native son” to rise to the occasion). How Soon Is Now is the anthem of these songs. Every person afflicted with shyness will probably identify with Morrissey’s sad disco tales: “There’s a club, if you’d like to go. You could meet somebody who really loves you. So you go, and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die.” Which more or less mirrors my juvenile experience, minus the crying and suicidal tendencies.
Like Morrissey, Hawley is looking for company in bright, busy places, only to find nothing. “I’m going downtown where there’s music. I’m going where voices fill the air. Maybe there’s someone waitin’ for me with a smile and a flower in her hair.” And with such hopes our hero puts on his best shoes and (as Kris Kristofferson would have it) his cleanest dirty shirt and heads to Coles Corner, apparently a popular hang-out in Sheffield. “I’m going downtown where there’s people. My loneliness hangs in the air, with no one there real waitin’ for me, no smile, no flower, nowhere.” And so he’ll make his sad way home.
Annika Norlin (for she is Hello Saferide) has nobody in her life, so she is looking to compensate for that with meaningless one-night stands, rationalising it with the statement of the song’s title. No strings attached. “I will be gone when you wake up. No awkward breakfasts, I swear. And don’t you look for me, because I could be anywhere – in someone else’s house, in someone else’s arms, with someone else to warm the pain away.” Her promiscuity is a band-aid for the sores of loneliness. She really would like closeness, to open up herself, not just her legs. “If I told you my stories and sang you my songs, would you laugh at me? Would you pity me? What would you say if I asked of you not out of accident, out of loneliness: would you shelter me? Will you shelter me?” And why does she not ask? Low self-esteem seems to be at play: “What can I ask of you? What would you want from me? What would you say if I just fell asleep?” Annika, there’s a club, if you’d like to go…
Another song about promiscuity compensating for loneliness. She wakes up with a one-night stand guy and instantly has regrets, thinking: “Whatever happened to a boyfriend, the kind of guy who makes love cause he’s in it… I want a boyfriend. I want all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas.” But it doesn’t seem that a boyfriend is on the cards (maybe Liz should look in the unrequited love section; loads of nice guys there), even when a one-night lover reaches out to her. She doesn’t want his pity. So, she concludes, “I’m gonna spend another year alone. It’s fuck and run, fuck and run.” But there is an alarming clue in the lyrics which might explain her disposition. “It’s fuck and run, fuck and run, even when I was 17. Fuck and run, fuck and run even when I was 12.” Does that suggest that she was abused, leading to these trust issues?
In an alternative riff on Audrey’s Somewhere That’s Green in Little Shop Of Horrors, Jay is describing a scene of domestic bliss (and great sex): “I’m making guacamole, he’s working on the car. When he grills turkey burgers he knows I like them charred. I like to wash the dishes, I like to scrub the floors, don’t mind doing his laundry, what are boyfriends for?” Yes, he wants to be a housewife. “What’s so wrong with that?” But, as it turns out, he’s not one yet. “Can’t wait to till he’s in my life, ’cause we haven’t met.” (
At first glance, this song (from Hay’s 2001 album Going Somewhere; one of three versions) might not belong in this series, but I think it has a place, and right here. The singer has a girl, but she’s obviously not what he really wants. He’s holding out for a better life which does not seem to include her. Indeed, even now, she is peripheral. “And you say: ‘Be still my love, open up your heart, let the light shine in.’ Don’t you understand I already have a plan, I’m waiting for my real life to begin.” It seems to me that our friend could be in depression, vainly holding out for a better future — “Let me throw one more dice, I know that I can win” — and in the process is unable to return the love offered by his current partner. Which is really just as tragic as Morrissey’s shyness, Annika’s and Liz’s promiscuity, and Kevin’s lack of self-confidence.
The group’s main songwriter John Phillips was a bit of a bastard. He had Cass Elliott singing about being fat, and he had his not always scrupulously faithful wife Michelle sing about her inability to remain monogamous. On 1967’s Glad To Be Unhappy he had Denny Doherty and Cass Elliott sing about unrequited love — knowing well that Cass was in unreciprocated love with Denny and that Denny was in love with John’s wife (need I post a Venn diagram?). There was, clearly, a lot of pain. So John has them croon the sadistic taunt “Like a straying baby lamb, with no Mama and no Papa, I’m so unhappy”! And then the mocking: “I can’t win, but here I am, more than glad to be unhappy.” The sentiment is not foreign to the experience of unrequited love, of course. “But for someone you adore, it’s a pleasure to be sad.” That ties in with the lyric of a song used in last year’s series (and which will be recycled this year): “There is pleasure to be had in this kind of pain” — the emotional masochism is a lifeline to hope, the delusion that the true love will come eventually.
This is a slowed down, quite superb cover of the Cheap Trick hit by the blues/soul/gospel Holmes Brothers. The lyrics make more sense when sung by a goofy pop-rocker, but this version is just too lovely to be ignored. Unsurprisingly, the singer is promising sacrifices to get the girl, right down to shining “up the old brown shoes” and making himself even more presentable by wearing a new shirt (throw in the use of deodorant and shampoo, and you might clinch the deal). It is not clear, of course, whether our hero’s sartorial countenance is the problem. Indeed, he seems quite clueless if he thinks that shiny shoes will provide comfort to the girl who seems to be experiencing a case of dejection herself, as our singer observes: “Feelin’ all alone without a friend, you know you feel like dyin’. Oh, didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I see you cryin’?” Or is he just projecting?
There is an even more acute sense of hopelessness when the object of unrequited affection is in a solid, happy relationship. So it is in this superb song. “I think you two are forever, and I hate to say it, but you’re perfect together.” Which sounds pretty magnanimous. Except it isn’t, as we learn in the next verse: “So fuck you and your untouchable face, and fuck you for existing in the first place.” Quite right. This isn’t in angry outburst, though. There is some self-loathing and immense sadness in this song. Witness the final verse: “In the back room there’s a lamp that hangs over the pool table, and when the fan is on it swings gently side to side. There’s a changing constellation of balls as we are playing. I see Orion and say nothing. The only thing I can think of saying…is fuck you.”
After all this profundity, we can find refuge in Weezer and in dreamland. Mr Cuomo is in love: “She’s in the air, in between molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide”, but evidently he is too shy or otherwise reluctant to approach her, except in his dreams where he has the courage to ask her to dance, and she accepts (rhyming ‘dance’ with ‘chance’ – charity impels me to interpret this as a shrewd homage to the lyrical genius of Abba). In his fantasy he is charming and considerate, literally sweeping the girl off her feet on the dancefloor: “It’s a good thing that you float in the air – that way there’s no way I will crush your pretty toenails into a thousand pieces.” We imagine she laughs with her head tilting back, revealing her throat (Body Language 101: it means she wants you). We don’t go to Weezer for lyrical sophistication, so we see the conclusion coming: “But when we wake, it’s all been erased.”
There aren’t many songs that feature the word “unrequited”. We’ve had Glad To Be Unhappy earlier, and here’s Billy Bragg using it in perhaps the best song from his 1984 debut album. It’s the poignant story of a schoolboy crush. At first she reciprocates the affection, but after a while (which in schoolboy terms is a wink of the eye) things cool off. “But I never made the first team, I just made the first team laugh. And she never came to the phone, she was always in the bath.” The boy experiences his first broken heart, poor kid. “In the end, it took me a dictionary to find out the meaning of ‘unrequited’, while she was giving herself for free at a party to which I was never invited.”
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