When doing some heavy soul reflection and consideration of one-hit wonders, such as Mr. Moderator’s Lemon Pipers “Green Tamborine,” I came across a sub-genre of 1970s one-hit wonders, songs which I would call the Necro-Pops. I would guess that this form has roots in the 1950s and 1960s car crash scenarios, such as “Tell Laura I Love Her” by Ray Peterson, “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las, and “Dead Man’s Curve” by Jan and Dean. And then there was the 1960s Bobby Goldsboro hit, “Honey,” as well as Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe,” which set the tone for the next decade.
Why did the 1970s have a slew of these strangely alluring but awful songs? All of them are over-the-top emotofests. Please consider the following evidence:
- Terry Jacks – “Seasons in the Sun”
- Michael Murphey – “Wildfire”
- Gilbert O’Sullivan – “Alone Again”
- Vicki Lawrence – “The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia”
- Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods – “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero”
There is even a more upbeat version:
- Paper Lace – “The Night Chicago Died”
Wouldn’t we agree that these are horrible songs? But every time I hear one of them, I shudder and keep listening, and am most likely able to sing along with them. Probably you are able to think of more of them (Lord have mercy). But why were they so popular in the 1970s? Was it a social phenomenon? Just an indicator of global bad taste? And why, to this day, when we hear them and sneer, do we also get choked up? I await your consideration.
My opinion may be shaded by personal experience, but I think it’s related to the fact that the ’70s were the beginning of the end of ’60s idealism, the Golden Age of divorce and prescription downers, and all that jazz. The ’70s were the time when people from all walks of life really started to “let their hair down,” and mwall’s Psychic Oblivion phenomenon (see Glossary, if you’re not familiar with this RTH published term) kicked in as the price to pay.
And after I wrote this, I thought of ANOTHER one:
Don McLean’s “Vincent.”
Mr. Mod, good theory. I’ve also been wondering about whether the continuation of the Vietnam War into the 1970’s was an impetus.
I’m still not sure what it’s about, but Elton John’s “Daniel” still evokes feelings of the kind of sadness that developed from “Honey” (GREAT call on that song as a building block!) and then took root in the ’70s. “Leaving on a Jet Plane” is another ’60s song that I remember from early childhood that fed into Necro-Pop. (I sense a Glossary term in development!)
And Cat’s in the Cradle.
Scientific reports show that acid rain from the 70s caused a serious problem with frogs’ fertility rates. Seems their genitalia shrunk and they were not procreating as successfully.
I believe this same phenomenon occurred in the 70s among singer-songwriters. Their testicles had shrunk to a point where their writing was affected.
How about “D.O.A.” by Bloodrock? Sung from the perspective of a dead air crash victim, recounting his final moments of life…for over 8 minutes!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O79EN3z6IpU
Oh, and this sexy thing from Hot Chocolate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFYOHrwi-W8 (sorta like “Marie Provost” without the chuckles…and dachshunds).
“Death sells!” – Ian Faith
We may need to consider sub-sub genres: I initially had in mind emotofests about death, but “Daniel,” and “Cat’s in the Cradle” also elicit strong emotional reflexes from me.
Yeah, I threw “Daniel” out there because, as a kid, I was so confused about the story of the song (Did his brother go blind or something?, I’d think to myself, while thinking of my own little brother) that it felt like someone died.
Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Alone Again (Naturally) (I think it had parenthesis around that part) is one of the ultimate downer songs that made it huge on the charts. The only thing more depressing would be losing everything in a house fire.
Great call on Bloodrock, bobby! I never really got the appeal of it, but we sure played it a lot when I was a teenager.
I just think beyond Mr.Mod’s mass psychosis theory that there was just no irony in the 70’s. Maudlin sadness and giddy happiness were taken at face value. “Leaving on a Jet Plane” was my 1st thought but Harry Nilsson’s version of “Without You” takes it right over the edge. You gotta admire that. Now Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss” (an oldies cover) reads as somewhat ironic to me.
Narco-Pop: as cool and refreshing as a drawer in the morgue.
Al
who’s Al?
“One Tin Soldier” the song from the movie “Billy Jack” seems to fall somewhere in this catagory, even if the character doesn’t die, he does however ride away.
Not from the ’70s but rather the mid-’80s, I just remembered that a 2004 live performance I posted last night of one of my band’s old songs fits squarely in the Necro-Pop genre!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIuMOqnl6-0
Per K’s comments on early Necro-Pop, there does seem to be a difference between the ’50s and ’60s style of dead people songs and the sad-sack, proto-emo ’70s take that ladymisskirroyale has highlighted.
If “Leader of the Pack” had been written and produced in the ’70s, the original song’s narrator would have told her parents off and jumped on the Leader’s ride, only to die with him at the end or survive and go on a brief killing spree to get gunned down by the local sheriff. Or the song would have been performed by a wimpy dude and would have been from the Leader’s perspective singing about how his father never had time to raise him while growing up because the father was a biker, too, and loved his motorcycle more than his son, and now the son would be repeating the cycle with his own motorcycle and neglected son.
Only vaguely-related question: Which mode of transportation has claimed the most lives in popular music? Without doing any research yet, I suspect that getting on a boat is the most dangerous thing a character in a song can do. That shit never ends well.
Since we are running through the Glossary with Necro-Pop and Psychic Oblivion how about the Power and Glory of some 80’s Loser Rock?
“All the love sent up high to pledge / For the last time will not reach the l-e-e-d-d-g-g-g-e-e-e-e” (complete with falling vocal effect). The Replacements – “The Ledge”
You know, even after all these years, Wildfire still makes my Top 5 list of songs about dead horses.
No question, too, that Daniel was a profoundly confusing song if you were a young kid in the early 70s. Same goes for Levon. It must be said that I still don’t know what the bleep is going on in those songs, songs which I rather like.
Mod, of the songs you listed initially, only Gilbert O’s Alone Again is even remotely bearable. The others are run from the room awful. Gilbert at least had a C-level McCartney vibe going.
I offer as an addition R. Dean Taylor’s Indiana Wants Me, although I have never listened closely enough to know if the narrator dies or not.
Who could have guessed there was a video, though? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD5UdXq-JLQ
Automobile currently has four votes in the “rock’s most dangerous vehicle” poll, while boat/ship didn’t even make the cut. Need I remind you people that while your average rock car crash takes out one, maybe two people tops, “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald” boasts a 29-man body count on its own?
For the ultimate downer, I give you:
“Feelings…nothing more than feelings…”
Sorry, alexmagic, an IT guy from work interrupted me as I was crafting the poll. Ship/boat will surely make a huge comeback!
y’all ever see Looking For Mr. Goodbar?
or Saturday Night Fever. LOTS of depressing shit in the 70s. very bleak.
“Cold Ethyl” by Alice Cooper – a “Necro-ice-pop” if you would.
“Rocketman” by Elton John – Necro-cosmo-pop.
“Candle In The Wind” – Ibid. – Two birds with one stone (sorry, couldn’t help myself)
“American Pie” – only in the 70’s could you have a cheery singalong chorus of “This’ll be the day that I die”
“Killing me softly” – to some people its a love song, to others a request
“Ballad of Lucy Jordan” – Cougar-pop?
“At Seventeen” – Waiting-for-prozac-to-be-invented-pop.
“Send In the clowns” -….. Oh God I can’t go on………need bourbon…….
Shouldn’t there be songs about death? I mean, the main thing we know about life is that it ends. Death is one of the great subjects of art throughout the ages. Is the problem just the inability of pop artists to write a good song about death? Can anyone name some?
Nice ones, beenreepin!
As for BigSteve’s question…Good songs about death? Would “in memoriam” songs count, because there must be a lot of those?
Doesn’t George Harrison have a song or two about death that’s not bad, or does it just seem like half of his songs are about death or his transcendent state in the physical world? There’s a song from his last album, “Stuck Inside a Cloud” that moves me whenever I hear it. I don’t know if he wrote it after he knew he was dying or what, but it has a sense of confronting either his death or a loved one’s.
I’ve written at least three songs about death. I’m not saying they’re great and I can’t even be sure that they’re good, but I know they don’t stink and aren’t sappy in the ways of these funny ’70s songs. I’m sure if we think about it we could name 50 solid songs that help us deal with death? Isn’t there a song or two on Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky album that you, BigSteve, turned me onto? I actually bought that album on vinyl for 99 cents this evening. I’ve come a long way, baby.
BTW, other purchases influenced by some of you in these Hallowed Halls include Procol Harum’s Salty Dog and Stupidity by Dr. Feelgood. I also bought Robert Palmer’s Sneaking Sally Through the Alley, an album I’ve long been interested in hearing beyond the one great cover, and a double-album greatest hits collection by Be-Bop Deluxe, a band I believe none of you will ever join me in enjoying! Oh, I also picked up two albums as a gift for a Townsperson. Stay tuned…
Thanks Mod!
OK , good songs about death – Id nominate “Don’t fear the Reaper”, but its been done to death (pardon the pun).
“Back in Black” – ACDC – not sur eif this qualifies
“I want my baby back” by Jimmy Cross –
digging up yor dead girlfriend – now thats love! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0x8S1U7O3w
26 comments in this thread and no one’s mentioned Timothy by The Buoys?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGNdvKvbxYQ
If only this were a Battle Royal; the competition would be closed and the belt would be mine!
“He Stopped Loving Her Today” sang George Jones. Or as I call it, “He Stopped Loving HARR Today.”
Good songs about death? “My Ride’s Here” by Zevon.
TB
“Detroit Rock City” by KISS — which also achieves the neat trick of combining a first-person account of the songwriter’s own death:
“There’s a truck ahead, lights starin’ at my eyes
Oh my God, no time to turn
I got to laugh, ’cause I know I’m gonna die… why?”
… and an exhortation to dance, viz:
“Get up!
Everybody’s gonna move their feet
Get down!
Everybody’s gonna leave their seat”
It’s doubly interesting because the lyric seems to suggest that the impending dancing may actually be the *cause* of the truck smashing into the singer’s car. Or is the word “why” simply a rumination on the transitory nature of life, and the dance lyric a purposeful, apocalyptic non-sequitur? I welcome your thoughts on this.
HVB
The 70s song that always really put me over the edge, at least when I was like 9 years old, was David Geddes’ “Run Joey Run”
As to “Detroit Rock City,” my young mind was very disturbed by that one too…but I have two interpretations of it. One is that the guy is so wasted that he sees death as the ultimate high. The other is that the dancing is a celebration during life after death.
The gunshots in the fadeout are pretty unambiguous.
Necro-Pop is an important term, because we have to make sure we don’t just start talking about “downer” songs. “Feelings,” for example, is a downer, but not in what I consider the spirit of this thread.
No, the guy hears his favorite song on the radio, then decides to make “the midnight show” (presumably by the band that plays it) (why he doesn’t already know they’re playing, I don’t know) (although these were the pre-Internet days) (although people did actually read newspapers back then) (although was this particular kid a newspaper reader? Seems unlikely) (I think I’ll stop with this silly parenthetical device now).
The dancing chorus is detailing the fun he is expecting to have. It is the thing that drives him as he drives fast and recklessly. And when he asks “WHY?!?” the image of the moving of feet/getting out of seat gives him his answer. Whether he muses grimly that it is all vanity that he will die for, or he muses, also grimly I guess, whether it’s as good a reason as any to die in this crazy Cold War/Vietnam War world is left open to interpretation. Which is why this is probably my favorite KISS song.
Besides, you know they got serious Detroit poon for writing this song.
I’ve always described this genre as Death Pop, and I’ve always held The Carpenters as some of its finest practitioners. Karen was a seriously bummed woman, if you can’t hear the despair in “Yesterday Once More” or “Superstar” you might want to check your pulse.
So, yeah, now you can blame The Carpenters for yet one more thing!
Terry Jacks’s first band, The Poppy Family, recorded tons of depressing. melancholy folk music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNg-GAnUxFQ
As I’ve noted before, you can hear the despair in “Merry Christmas, Darling.” I still think the subject of that song has no idea that the singer exists and it’s all a fantasy love-from-afar kind of thing.
My take on Detroit Rock City is that KISS had probably already written at least one, if not several “our fans love us so much they’d be cool with dying for us” songs, and the actual car accident just gave them the details to fill out the lyrics.
Maybe Paul and Gene had each written one – sort of like Paul and John each having a nature-themed song where only one could make the cut for the White Album – and when they had the news of the accident read to them, Gene had to grudgingly admit that Paul’s version was a lot closer than Gene’s “a bunch of Lady KISS Fans die in a massive orgy that Peter and Ace are only allowed to watch on closed-circuit TV” song.
Also, I like to sing “We’re goin’ to a KISS show and we’re all gonna die!” to it.
Though not overtly about death, I was always creeped out by the nitogen narcosis in space vibe of Space Oddity.
As a kid, I didn’t know from the South and the Civil War, so I was particularly disturbed by The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down. I thought Dixie was someone who was driven into a river to her death by a singing mob.
It’s amazing that these stupid songs are still so ingrained. My sister just suggested one more: “Last Song” by Edward Bear, I had completely forgotten about until I looked it up, and (unfortunately) then could remember all the words.
And Rick, great call on the Carpenters.
Per Scharpling and Wurster from The Best Show on WFMU, the song’s proper title is “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dick C.” down, chronicling a near-death moment for Dick Cavett.
Re: Nitrogen narcosis in space, I bet a few times in the ’70s, Bowie considered chartering a space shuttle to try that out for a high.
Cripes, I can’t believe I forgot to offer the truly, truly brutal “Rocky” by Austin Roberts. I beg you, if you don’t remember this one, keep tissues and a barf bag close at hand. I think the key change before the last verse–practically a sine qua non in these songs–might be where your lunch comes up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flOcEFXrsTQ
Taking a look at the label of the 45, apparently it was written and produced by Bob Montgomery. I’d like to think this is the longtime Red Sox backup catcher and broadcaster.
Misterioso – perfect! And sick! What really got me was the happy, boppy little tune with all that gushing going on..
And I cannot believe no one has invoked the supremely lachrymose “Shannon” by the aptly named Henry Gross.
Apparently it is about Carl Wilson’s dead dog. http://www.henrygross.com/bio.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kSrV_CubiQ
I have to admit that Shannon makes me cry every time. You are a genius, misterioso. In this instance, that may not be such a good thing.