Note: This Random Weekend SOTD was scheduled to run this Sunday. When I heard the awful news of his passing, I decided to move it up a week. I’ll give the man a proper remembrance at some point, but for now I’ll just run this blog entry untouched. I will say, this particular song selection is quite poignant in light of the news.
Here’s a lovely Random Weekend selection from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ 2010 album Mojo. It’s a great album that I rarely revisit, but should.
As I mentioned in my first post about Tift Merritt’s Stitch of the World, the album was written in the wake of her divorce. In general, the record is more about the recovery than the break-up, with the exception of today’s SOTD, ‘Eastern Light.’
Again accompanied by Sam ‘Iron & Wine’ Beam, Merritt delivers a gorgeous and haunting elegy to a failed relationship, assigning blame to neither party but longing for a feeling she can never reclaim.
Here’s a real tear-jerker from Brad Paisley that falls into one of my favorite categories: Dead or Dumped?
The singer is mourning the loss of a loved one, but is it a death or a break-up? The lyrics favor either interpretation.
So do the YouTube comments, which contain tales of best friends who no longer speak, dumped boyfriends and girlfriends and people who’ve lost members of their family.
Today’s song, a slow beauty from the back half of Brad Paisley’s wonderful American Saturday Night, falls into a category I like to call “Dead or Dumped?”
The lyrics are sufficiently vague and the tone sufficiently somber to support the theory that the woman Paisley is singing about left him not by choice but because she dropped dead.
I’ve encountered other songs with a similar make-up, though I can’t for the life of me think of any of them right now. If you can, please add them to the comments.
Meet Me In Montauk 