Tragic Childhood Songs
LaserWolf
Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
Some good ones? Have we done this?
Ode To Billie Jo
Papa Was A Rolling Stone
I think we can skip Gypsy Tramps and Thieves, and any 60s car crash songs.
Ode To Billie Jo
Papa Was A Rolling Stone
I think we can skip Gypsy Tramps and Thieves, and any 60s car crash songs.
Comments
Poor kids.
Isnt this a kid repeating what his momma and them said...VS their own perspective?
To me, first and foremost it is about a child who was abandoned by his father.
Song starts with the fathers death.
Perhaps the kid doesn't care about his dads death and is not effected by 'what his momma and them said'.
But it doesn't read that way to me.
It was the third of September; that day I'll always remember,
'Cause that was the day that my daddy died.
I never got a chance to see him; never heard nothin' but bad things about him.
Mama I'm depending on you to tell me the truth.
Mama just looked at me and said, "Son,
Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."
"Fancy"
Bobbie was on it, man.
"Luka," of course; Company Flow's "Last Good Sleep"; Max Romeo's "Evening News"; I guess I should have some regional bias toward Lou Rawlses's "Dead End Street," but that shit's pretty corny, honestly; perhaps Metallica's cover of "Turn The Page," just on the strength of its absolutely gut-wrenching video.
Oh, and "Dirty Boulevard." Rest in power, Lou Reed.
I always found "Patches" by Clarence Carter to be a sad childhood song. He sung it with such emotion, a real tearjerker.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
i dont remember a lot of stuff from my early childhood but i remember being in kindergarten and a choir singing 'one tin soldier' at a remembrance day assembly. a lot of people cried and i didn't fully understand. still don't to be honest.
Perhaps her best song, people who don't know should check it.
Even thought the story turns my stomach.
I read some interview with Bobbie Gentry where she called it something like "a study in unconscious cruelty," about how the girl's family clearly knows that she and Billie Joe were close ("close"), but still can't be bothered themselves to invest any real concern in what's happened to him or how she might be feeling about it. As a result, when she grows up, she recounts their fates as flatly and as unemotionally as they did his. Kids pay closer attention than people think.
Incredible song, though. Like "Holding Back The Years" or "Tears On My Pillow," whenever I hear "Ode To Billie Joe" in a public place, everyone kinda slows down together to wait for it. It's lovely.
But yeah, as far as what we're talking about here, "Fancy" is definitely more direct.
Yes.
That you never really know why he did it and the family's indifference...their inability and/or unwillingness to connect and empathize with her. Hits a teenage girl's angrylonely nerve like I tell you what.
Strange Fruit
Easy to be Hard
Not music related, except maybe for wizard prog rock bands, but death by oven in Hansel & Gretel / Baba Yaga is wrong in so many ways. I never could stomach tales of Christian martyrs enjoying agonizing demises, either. Jesus seemed like an awesome dude, but honestly, I would back off on the excessive preaching if it meant not being skinned or boiled alive. That's just me, though.
BONUS BEAT:
"hey hey down inna the ghetto i grow
where me say pain and tribulation all i know..
mi mommy and mi daddy all a we so poor
storm it come and it blow down mi door
rain a pour through mi one window
mi boots tear up and mi toes just a show..."
and that's even not getting into the father leaving, the brother dying and the older sister prostituting herself, getting pregnant and then leaving the baby, all of which surface throughout the discography.
Freal.
:cry:
I had two (2) rekkids as a tot and it was that and "3 Little Fishes" (John "3rd. Doctor Who" Pertwee with t3h rap)
Actually there are probably a grip more Country songs relating a childs experience with alcoholism, abuse, abandonment etc..
It isn't Country without cheatin' and beatin' but I think they are still just called love songs.
Thanks. Love Dolly, but I don't need to listen to that one again.
There is a Dolly & Porter Wagner one that is very creepy. I'll try to find it.
Coat Of Many Colors goes well with Story Of Isaac. Tragic childhood stories from the Bible.
Related to previous posts, this version does the business on 45:
Also found Dolly and Porter singing Dark End Of The Street. Unfortunately they stink it up.
I don't understand the lyrics, I think they're in Danish. Maybe it's only the imagery that's creepy about it but then it's supposedly sung by a adult vocalist which would also be kind of creepy.
My favorite tragic childhood song is this:
A true work of genius. The first memories of hearing this go back to my very earliest childhood and it's been played a lot on the local radio stations where I grew up. Year after year I understood a bit more about the lyrics which turned the song progressively more scary, tragic and beautiful.
This translation according to lyrics-translations.com is kindof shitty... I don't have the time right now to fix it but it should give you an idea:
Do not play with the grubby children
"Do not play with the grubby children, not singing their songs -
Just go to the upper town, do as your brothers! "
So said the mother, the father said, taught the pastor -
But it always crept back through the garden gate
And in the rabbit hutches
Where they played sixty-six
To tobacco and rat skins
Girls under skirts leered
Where on old boards crates
Cats dozing in the sun
Where to when the rain poured
Engelbert the idiots listening,
The bite on a hair comb
Pied Piper blew songs
Evening at the family table, after prayer to the meal
As it was said: "Again you smell rabbit hutch!
Do not play with the grubby children, not singing their songs -
Just go to the upper town, do as your brothers! "
They drove him to a school in the Upper Town -
Combed her hair and curled Language smooth
Bow hull and learned words
And instead Pied ways
He had to fiddle the Largo
And before Aunt skinny old men
Under red rat eyelashes
Strum Par Coeur Kinderszenen
And, jammed in rows of four
Decayed and rotten bones scream -
Situated between flags
Roar, that keeps friendship!
Sometimes in the evening he crept to the rabbit hutch which
Then squatted since the urchins, sang mockingly:
"Do not play with the grubby children, not singing their songs -
Just go to the upper town, do as your brothers! "
In revenge he got rich. In the upper town
Since he has built himself a house, took a bath every day
Smelled like bess're people smell -
Laughed fat, when all rats
Anxiously avoided in the gullies
Because they had smelled it
Rabbit hutches and he tore
From, their place he had
Build gardens for the children
Loved superscript women
Fast cars and music -
Blond and loud and thick honey
Came his son, nails biters, late in the evening for supper
Smelled it, it struck him, shouted: "stink rabbit hutch!
Do not play with the grubby children, not singing their songs -
Just go to the upper town, do as your brothers! "
And one day he missed a curve smooth -
It has herausgepellt him from an egg of scrap
When he later through the streets
Limping, he was seen on days
Blow on 'nem hair comb songs
Rat wearing fur collar -
Lagged behind bouncing children
Would prevent them from school gear
And ran to rabbit hutches -
One day around Bright
Has he a child infatuated
And dragged into a stable
His body was found in rats rumschwamm the pond -
All around the urchins were blowing on the ridge:
"Do not play with the grubby children, not singing their songs -
Just go to the upper town, do as your brothers! "
yes