The Words of a Sad Country Song

By Bobby Neal Winters

Music has an amazing power to move your emotions.  In my case, country music can have a strong effect on me.

The other day one snuck up on me.  It was a song that is at least a decade old that I’d never heard before. “If I Die Young” by the Band Perry came on:

If I die young, bury me in satin,/

Lay me down on a bed of roses,/

Sink me in the river at dawn,/

Send me away to the words of a love song.

Suddenly there were tears running down my cheeks and I was wanting to hold all of my daughters close.  I wiped my face, and I felt better, and the thing is, I hadn’t even realized that I’d needed a catharsis.

You need to have a catharsis every once in a while.  You need to bleed the sadness off.  If you aren’t careful, you might wind up in your garage drinking whisky and cleaning your gun when “Cats in the Cradle” comes on.

I’ve got certain songs that I will use to evoke certain moods.  “If I Die Young” is now on my list for when I need to cry. It joins “Red Dirt Girl” by Emmylou Harris, which can reach into my chest through my ribs and squeeze my heart:

She loved her brother I remember back when/

He was fixin' up a '49 Indian/

He told her,? Little sister, gonna ride the wind/

Up around the moon and back again/

He never got farther than Vietnam/

I was standin' there with her/

When the telegram come for Lillian/

Now he's lyin' somewhere/

About a million miles from Meridian

I’ve noted that a large number of the songs on my sad list are by women. I wonder if this is because the female of the species is around us for our most vulnerable moment?  They are there for us when we are born. They are there for us when we die. They even teach us how to use the toilet.  In doing this, do they learn the pathway into our hearts or do we, by virtue of having experienced them in these intimate times, learn to trust them with our pain? 

Am I just generalizing my own experience?  Do I just like women? Or is this just a sampling bias?

One thing they seem to have in common beyond being female is that the songs they write tell a story.  They are good at it.

They are artists who paint with words.  In “Ode to Billy Joe” Bobbie Gentry wrote:

And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas/

Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense,/

pass the biscuits please/

There's five more acres in the lower forty I got to plow/

And Mama said it was shame about Billie Joe, anyhow/

Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge/

And now Billie Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

I can see that. I’ve been at that table. I’ve passed those blackeyed peas.  I can smell the biscuits.  She puts me there; she makes me feel the pain; she convicts me of my sin.

To be sure, there are men who do this.  George Jones’ song “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman) tells a story with amazing economy:

Kept some letters by his bed/

Dated 1962/

He had underlined in red /

Every single "I love you"/

I went to see him just today/

Oh but I didn't see no tears/

All dressed up to go away/

First time I'd seen him smile in years

But for every song like that, there’s one to match it that’s written by a woman.  And the women aren’t ashamed to be manipulative. Dolly Parton has exhibited this ability herself from time to time:

She was just a little girl, not more than six or seven/

But that night as they slept, the angels took them both to heaven/

God knew little Andy would be lonesome with her gone/

Now Sandy and her puppy dog won't ever be alone

It is easy to be cynical about this. Manipulating our emotions to sell a song, to make a dollar.  Catharsis for cash.  If so, I am okay with that, but then I don’t think there is anything wrong, per se, with sentimentality.

I’d mentioned George Jones above who owns “He Stopped Loving Her Today” by his interpretation.  To match this, Erinn Peet Lukes of the bluegrass band Thunder and Rain does a cover of Guns and Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” that takes it to an entirely different place.  As she is a woman, someone, we--or at least I--have an easier time believing she’s singing about her own child.

As I’ve mentioned interpretation, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Patsy Cline. I don’t know whether she ever wrote a song or not, but she owns everyone she's ever sung.  

Anyway, I’ve been baptized in my own tears with the aid of these songs.  Even though I neither drink whiskey nor clean my guns in the garage, I should be safe for a while lest “Cat’s in the Cradle” should come on.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.