Songs Style

The traditional musician and the writer in me meet when it comes to songs that tell a story. All good songs do, to some extent, but most are a vignette: a snapshot in the middle of (implied) backstory and perhaps resolution. This is part of why Adele’s “Rumour Has It” drives me so nuts: I can’t suss out the exact sequence of events or what’s going on. Which I think is the point with that one, as it’s about baseless rumo(u)rs and how they get out of hand, but … still!

But in this case, I’m talking about ballads and story songs, music that shares the whole scope of a story. And in true Celtic fashion, often an unhappy ending. Easily one of my favorites:

The West Wind Circus – Helen Reddy

(Fun sidebar about this song: the first time I heard it, I went, “This is *so incredibly Celtic* in sensibility.” Some time later, I did a Google search on the composer, and many of the hits on his name were Irish tunes such as Eleanor Plunkett.)

Reddy does this a lot – “Keep On Singing” and “Angie Baby” are two others that spring to mind. By contrast, I’d consider “Delta Dawn,” though it definitely makes events clear, less of a story song and more of a vignette. It’s static, staying in the aftermath. (For the longest time, I thought the guy in this song was “a man of loaded grease.”)

Here’s a slightly more recent song, the arc of a life:

I’ll Go Too – Carrie Newcomer

And, of course, there’s a classic. Here’s the inimitable Kirsty MacColl’s take on …

Miss Otis Regrets

This one is so definitive for me that I find the uptempo jazz version jarring. (And this isn’t even quite the right version – I couldn’t find the Titanic Days cut on the internet.) It’s Celtic emotion at its best.

For my fellow writers, I’m going to end with a jazzy harp original that presents the ultimate writer’s dilemma:

Winslow – Verlene Schermer