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| The Most Depressing Songs You'll Ever Hear; Songs to top yourself by | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 17 2007, 02:42 AM (1,794 Views) | |
| Merry | May 22 2009, 10:14 PM Post #106 |
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Thank you for posting these, Clare! I see two of the dreariest songs I've ever heard in my life covered; 'Sylvia's Mother' and 'Season's In The Sun', and I couldn't agree more with the assessments! :giggle: :) Merry |
 G, I love you. | |
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| FamousGroupie | May 22 2009, 11:03 PM Post #107 |
Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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Merry, listen to the Jacques Brel version of Seasons In The Sun called Le Moribond - nowhere near as depressing as Terry Jacks. While you're there, look up Brel's song Amsterdam on YouTube - spine tingling stuff. |
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Youth truth beauty fame boredom and a bottle of pills | |
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| FamousGroupie | Jun 4 2009, 07:16 PM Post #108 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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Total Eclipse Of The Heart Released 1983 Every now and then I get a little bit cranky 'bout a song that hangs with me like a malignant boil. Every now and then I get a bit down when I have to listen to it 20 times in an hour. Every now and then I get a little bit tempted to throw myself in front of a bus. Every now and then I get a little bit injured when the bus grinds me into the pavement... Don't worry. I haven't lost my mind. I'm simply rephrasing the numbskull lyrics to Bonnie Tyler's depressing 1983 hit Total Eclipse Of The Heart to voice my dread at having to revisit this monstrous gestalt song. After 25 years, it still vanquishes the will of all who dare to turn around to gaze into its bright eyes. Though not the most depressing song ever written, Total Eclipse Of The Heart is, hands down, the most demented, and we can thank Jim Steinman for unleashing it upon us. Even if no one gets offed in the lyrics, there's still more than enough death in Total Eclipse to make it a Perfect Storm, if only because it seems to have killed Bonnie Tyler's career. The Welsh singer was pretty big a few decades back, starting with her first hit single It's A Heartache in 1977. Her trademark was a raspy singing voice that sounded like she gargled with Ajax. After the success of It's A Heartache, though, Tyler's follow-up singles didn't chart well and she went in search of a new collaborator to prepare her for the 1980s. She wound up partnering with Jim Steinman, the songwriter behind Meat Loaf's infamous Bat Out Of Hell album which has to date sold 30 million copies worldwide. His reputation as a composer of twisted pop anthems outfitted with hara-kiri lyrics somehow appealed to Tyler and she was eager to work with him. The result was the schizoid trans-Atlantic chart topper Total Eclipse Of The Heart. If you cross Brian Wilson with Bram Stoker and add more voices in the head, you'd have this song. The opening piano of Total Eclipse sounds the clarion call for all of Steinman's winged succubi to assemble. Bonnie Tyler, swathed in druid clothing while sandpapering her larynx, awaits the master's cue. He is hunched over a Steinway inside the darkened ballroom of a crumbling antebellum mansion (they're always antebellum), playing his Lizzie-Borden-at-rest intro while a raven perches on his shoulder. 'Turn arrouuuuund', a boy soprano with shrivelled genitalia sings with ethereal ease. This is Bonnie's cue: 'Every now and then I get a little bit lonely...' As the music creeps along like a ghost with a hangover, we find out that 'every now and then' Bonnie Tyler gets a little bit 'lonely', a little bit 'tired', a little bit 'nervous' and a little bit 'terrified'. And let's not forget a little bit 'restless', 'helpless' and 'angry'. Basically she's a little bit nuts. She's everything a guy would want in a woman. (Did you know she listens to the sound of her tears?) This leads her to fall apart 'every now and then', though I suspect it's more often than that. And why shouldn't she? She's been handed so many neurotic verses, she sounds like she's quoting the collected works of Sybil. The constant repetition of 'every now and then I get a little bit...' goes beyond maddening and you wonder if Steinman's neurons were misfiring when he wrote the lyrics. Eventually, someone bribes Steinman to get on with it and bring in a chorus. Bonnie Tyler ups her rasp, declaring 'I need you now to-night! And I need you more than ever!...' That may be, but after hearing how angry, nervous and terrified she gets 'every now and then', the guy probably bolted like a gazelle. The more the song goes on, the more frenzied it gets. Tyler literally screams how 'we're living in a powder keg' that's about to be ignited, howling with such conviction I suspect Steinman was dangling a live rat in front of her. When the histrionics subside, Tyler laments how there used to be light in her life 'but now there's only love in the dark'. It is, she sings with consummate weirdness, 'a total eclipse of the heart'. Right when you think this song is over, the Rasputin Effect comes into play and resurrects it. An overblown instrumental passage that sounds like Steinman's scoring an oil tanker disaster pounds forth until Tyler begins reciting even more 'every now and then...' mantras. Finally, she turns her voice into Angus Young's amplifier and shreds her way through the chorus again. A choir of voices (human optional) back her up as she makes her final futile wail about how 'forever's gonna start tonight...!' The volcano crescendo ends after half the session musicians drop dead and Steinman's deranged piano carries the bodies away. Total Eclipse Of The Heart doesn't really end as much as become extinct. The fade alone lasts 45 seconds, pushing the song's running time past the seven-minute mark. There are few songs, depressing and otherwise, as exhausting as Total Eclipse. Listening to it is like an opera company bludgeoning you with copies of Anne Rice novels. The song is Steinman's Ring Cycle without the funny hats, a perverse attempt at neo-Romantic gothic bombast being sung by a woman trying to out-growl Kim Carnes. Total Eclipse begins creepy, turns disturbing and ends up terribly psychotic. You're completely drained when it's over and desperately in need of shower so you can rinse off the raven droppings. Bonnie Tyler never repeated the success of Total Eclipse Of The Heart (Holding Out For A Hero doesn't count) and her album sales languished. It's as if she sold her soul for a chance to live in the mad world of Jim Steinman just to see what it was like. Though she climbed a mountain with Total Eclipse, it cursed her with a song that today is all but banned from Adult Contemporary radio. You're more likely to hear that The Beatles are reuniting than a station play Total Eclipse Of The Heart. Turn around, bright eyes. And look at the mess you left. The Song |
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Youth truth beauty fame boredom and a bottle of pills | |
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| FamousGroupie | Jun 4 2009, 09:23 PM Post #109 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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Once you've reacquainted yourself with the original video clip for Total Eclipse, take a look at this one. It's very clever, and VERY funny. |
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Youth truth beauty fame boredom and a bottle of pills | |
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| FamousGroupie | Jun 6 2009, 04:10 AM Post #110 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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OK, slight cock-up in above post - I meant to send you to this link :duh: |
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Youth truth beauty fame boredom and a bottle of pills | |
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| FamousGroupie | Jun 18 2009, 11:10 PM Post #111 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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Honey Released 1968 I find myself in a quandary. How do you write about a man as nice, talented, wholesome, intelligent and dedicated to children as Bobby Goldsboro when he's also the man who recorded one of the most molar-wrenching eye-gouging arsenic-gulping artery-carving impale-me-on-a-roasting-spit depressing songs ever written? The soppy death ballad Honey, which involves a guy reminiscing about his deceased wife, is a ready candidate for Perfect Storm status as it has everything: maudlin lyrics, deadly earnest vocal delivery, sappy strings and no discernible reason as to why it should exist other than to force listeners to dash their brains out with a ball peen hammer. Goldsboro began his career in the early 1960s as a guitarist for the late, great Roy Orbison before finding success as a solo singer of easy listening pap that featured his vibrato-cursed voice. The general public, still afraid of The Rolling Stones, found both him and his white-as-yeast songs comforting; even their titles were cutesy: See The Funny Little Clown, Watching Scotty Grow and the like. Then in 1968 at the height of the Tet offensive, Goldsboro released his cover of an appalling ballad entitled Honey and, for a brief time, Vietnam didn't seem quite so bad. The song was written by the late songwriter Bobby Russell, who somehow got inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame for penning some of the worst hit songs ever, including Little Green Apples (another Goldsboro hit) and the depressingly awful The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia which his then wife Vicki Lawrence recorded. Karaoke machines are known to self-destruct if forced to play it, but it cannot hold a bipolar candle to Honey, a number one hit in 1968 and one of the biggest-selling singles of all time, naturally. (I've given up on adverbs invoking surprise.) There's a conspiracy theory in there somewhere that involves aliens with pods because no rational human can possibly listen to Honey without wanting to pull a double Van Gogh and hack off their own ears. I looked for any viable excuse not to include Honey in this series other than maybe it was over-qualified. I couldn't think of any, so I loaded up on Scotch and forced myself to revisit the maudlin death ditty that is Honey. I began with remakes, my theory being they wouldn't be as bad and then I'd be prepared for when I finally came face to face with The Beast, that being Goldsboro's version. Pianist Floyd Cramer's instrumental muzak rendition reacquainted me with the phrase-heavy melody of Honey, which (music theory joke approaching) sounds like 300 appoggiaturas standing in the unemployment line. I moved on to smooth country baritone Eddy Arnold's cover. His grandfatherly vocals over a waft of Nashville strings were blissfully soporific and I fell asleep before hearing anything disturbing. Roger Whittaker? I have no idea because five seconds into his version, I heard an oboe and sprained my wrist shutting it off. I decided I was as ready as I'd ever be. Over a bed of strings, Goldsboro begins with a scene right out of a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie: a man standing in his backyard and studying a large tree, commenting to someone on how much it's grown. But at one time 'Friend.... it wasn't big'. The tree began as just a twig that was planted by his late wife Honey, who is patronisingly described as 'kinda dumb and kinda smart'. (Since she's dead, she wouldn't be offended.) We get to hear a lot about who Honey was, like how she once slipped on some ice and fell, almost injuring herself. 'I laughed 'til I cried', Goldsboro tells us. (That's nice. How about helping her up, you prick?) She used to cry herself, by the way, after watching some 'sad and silly late late show', probably the Tonight Show with special guest Bobby Goldsboro doing this freaking song. 'I surprised her with a puppy,' he continues, one that made him stay up all night, too. This lyrics serves absolutely no narrative purpose other than to work a puppy into the song. Goldsboro sings in the chorus about missing Honey, adding how he'd love to be with her if only he could. Since this was before restraining orders came into vogue, we must assume he cannot be with Honey because she died. We are briefly tricked when the next verse tells us how she crashed the car and subsequently was sad, but this is not a Teenage Car Crash song. She wasn't hurt, just afraid that he'd be upset, but he really wasn't. After all, she can't help it. She's stupid and clumsy, remember? Then everything changes one day. Goldsboro continues plaintively, singing of coming home to find her crying, his vibrato so pronounced you could go surfing in it. Now comes the depression barrage, being the arrival of spring, filled with blooming flowers and singing robins. This is when Honey goes away. 'One day when I wasn't home,' Goldsboro sings, 'the angels came'. Honey, ill from some terminal disease, expires alone in the house. Her demise is both tragic and odd. If she was dying, 'Where were you?!', you want to scream. Why would you not be home while your wife is on her deathbed? But he's not paying attention, for his life is now just an empty stage 'where Honey played'. He wakes up at night calling out her name while 'a small cloud cries' down on a flowerbed that Honey once planted. Honey is by far the wordiest depressing song ever written, crammed full of blooming flowers, puffy clouds, angels, singing robins, planted trees and the puppy. It's as if Bobby Russell loaded up on as many cloying images as he could find so there'd be no excuse for people not to wail like coyotes. But it's Goldsboro's reedy tenor and wide-eyed delivery that crank up the gooey melodrama that infests this song like bubonic plague. More than 40 years after its release, it remains one of the most depressing songs ever conceived. If any uninitiated readers plan on listening to Honey just for yuks, please don't. But if you must, then I strongly urge you to drink heavily and then bail from it after Honey wrecks the car. You'll have already heard about the puppy, the planted tree, her young heart, the snow in the yard, their joyous times together and the implication that Honey is dead. After that, turn the goddamn song off and run like a cheetah because if you stay to the end, you'll get hit with spring, angels, Honey's name being called out and clouds crying on flowerbeds. You won't make it out with your senses intact; trust me, it is that bad. After all, Honey is a Perfect Storm. The Song |
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Youth truth beauty fame boredom and a bottle of pills | |
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| FamousGroupie | Jul 5 2009, 01:56 AM Post #112 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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The Shortest Story Released 1976 Before his death at age 38 in a traffic accident in 1981, the singer-songwriter Harry Chapin was an unstinting champion of the oppressed, and devoted much of his life to combating poverty and world hunger. He raised millions of dollars for charity playing benefit concerts while giving away his own money and tirelessly lobbying Congress for federal aid. Never a big seller and dismissed by critics, Chapin nonetheless had a loyal following of fans who were attracted to his sincerity and charming manner. In short, Harry Chapin was a decent human being who just happened to write one of the most horribly depressing songs in the history of pop music. Harry Chapin was born in 1942 in Long Island, New York, and formed a folk group with brothers Tom and Steve that performed in Greenwich Village during the early 1960s. He later worked in film production and even recieved an Oscar nomination for his 1969 boxing documentary Legendary Champions. He continued to write and perform his narrative songs in clubs, landing a recording contract in 1971 when the labels were signing singer-songwriters. His long and slightly fatuous ballad Taxi became a staple of FM radio (likely because of its lyric '...takin' tips and gettin' stoned') and he scored a number one hit in 1974 with the sentimental Cat's In The Cradle. Prolific and earnest to a fault, Chapin was never a great tunesmith and tended to write songs with on-the-nose lyrics outfitted with clunky rhymes. Though he could be funny in concert, Chapin sometimes took himself a little too seriously, especially in his charity work. No one doubted his commitment and generosity, but many a hapless person found themselves cornered by Chapin as he harangued them about global economics, reeling reams of statistics off the top of his head while the listener's eyes glazed over. It is exactly this kind of misguided didactism that infects his song The Shortest Story. A studio track, which closes out his 1976 concert album Greatest Stories Live, The Shortest Story is about - are you ready for this? - an infant that dies of malnutrition. I'm not kidding. In fact, the song is sung from the viewpoint of an infant that dies of malnutrition. This is so not a good idea. The first time you hear The Shortest Story, you know you're in trouble just from the opening alone: a 12-string guitar and a tubular bell ring out a single note in unison. Like the oboe, tubular bells do not belong within a hunter's mile of any studio where a song is being produced unless it's the theme to a movie about demonic possession. No percussion device portends death better than a set of tubular bells; they're the banshee of musical instruments. Finally Chapin is heard. 'I am born today,' he sings mournfully. With no doctor or midwife around, the infant's birth mother must slap the child 'and I draw a breath and cry...' He sees clouds above him, indicating that he was likely born outside in a field, his family living in squalor in Biafra, Bangladesh, the Sudan, Ethiopia, anyplace there's poor farmland, political chaos and no rainfall. 'I am glad to be alive,' Chapin adds. A string quartet creeps in, depressing the proceedings even more (some sick engineer over-mic'ed the cello). It is a week later and the infant can 'taste the hunger and I cry...' Mama, who has her other two children clinging to her, is so malnourished she cannot nurse. All around him are the sounds of children crying from lack of food. 'Someone weeps,' Chapin sings. In case you're wondering, week-old infants are not normally this articulate, except in those cutesy Look Who's Talking movies where babies come into the world with their own voiceovers and a team of joke writers. Call me superficial, but I prefer those kind of babies. The one in Chapin's song has been handed a raw deal, but being so tiny and undeveloped, he cannot raise a revolt or even steal a neighbour's chicken. This obviously was Chapin's point but there are better ways to express it. One alternative is... anything else except sing this song. Twenty days later, the infant lies neglected. Too weak to cry, he stares up at a bird that 'crawls across the sky' (birds that crawl?). Finally, Chapin brings it home with guillotine-like efficiency as the infant asks rhetorically why is 'there nothing now to do but DIE!' The tubular bell returns with a clang, chiming three times over the desolate sound of rushing wind. The only thing that saves The Shortest Story from being a number one Perfect Storm is the accuracy of the title. The song is mercifully brief; any longer and you'd be gnawing your leg off. I know, I'm being harsh about a song written by a man who cannot defend himself but, come on, does anybody really want to listen to something like this? Did die-hard Chapin fans blissfully hold up lit Zippos whenever he broke into The Shortest Story during his shows? Who among us could sit through such a horrid song and not feel like someone is peeling the skin off our skulls with the key to a sardine can? Chapin's obsession with eliminating world hunger made him an effective ambassador and spokesperson for the disenfranchised, but it often turned his muse into an agitprop fanatic whose ancestors bombed Haymarket Square. He composed more than a few protest songs meant to instil 'awareness' of various social problems, but The Shortest Story goes so far overboard, it takes the ship with it. We're all very aware of the horrors of famine. We've read the 'Sponsor-A-Child' ads in newspapers, seen Sally Struthers in the African village yammering on about dysentery, watched the Live Aid concert and got sick of We Are The World. Awareness we have. Getting slammed over the head with this suicide-inducing tubular-bell ringing folkie nightmare is something we don't need. The Shortest Story is the equivalent of someone dumping 50 tons of raw nuclear waste in the middle of the park to demonstrate how bad it is to litter. If I sound obsessive (read: disturbed) about The Shortest Story, I have reason to be: I had to play it once for a Christmas programme (you read that right). It was 1981 and I was still in college. A friend of mine named George asked if I'd play guitar to accompany him on a song he wanted to sing at his church. 'What song are you going to do?' I asked. 'It's called The Shortest Story,' he said. 'It's by Harry Chapin.' I knew some of Chapin's songs but couldn't recall that one. I asked George to play it for me so I could figure out the chords. He put it on and I listened to it, tubular bells and all. After my delirium wore off, I looked at George in total bewilderment. 'You wanna sing that song for a Christmas programme?' 'I want people to know that there are others less fortunate than us,' he said. 'The holidays are about giving.' I could've begged out of it. I could've played sick. I could've pretended I sprained my hand, but for reasons I still don't understand, I consented to accompany George on his mission to sing The Shortest Story to help celebrate Christmas. The following Sunday, I arrived at a Lutheran church near the campus and sat in a pew with George and his girlfriend Lisa. Two young women were on the altar cheerily singing Christmas carols while strumming out-of-tune classical guitars. A third played a flute in a manner that can only be described as 'primitive'. It was all very warm and cheerful, and I silently wished they'd break into a John Coltrane number and jam all morning. But, alas, our time came and the minister introduced us to the congregation. George and I went up to the altar and I sat down with my acoustic, sweating cannonballs. 'What am I doing here?' I asked myself. 'Good morning,' George greeted them. 'Though we're all looking forward to Christmas, we should remember that there are those less fortunate than us...' (as he introduced the song, the parishioners gazed back with complete trust; I looked around and mentally noted the fire exits) '.... and it's called The Shortest Story.' George nodded to me, closed his eyes, and we began. 'I am born today,' he sang. To this day, I will not forget the sight of 200 Lutherans slowly twisting their faces into expressions of utter horror while George and I performed this African famine ditty. By the time we got to the line about the mother vainly squeezing her breast, every pew featured a dozen people who resembled Edvard Munch's The Scream. I bent my head into the lowest vulture crouch I could adopt and stared at my shoes. Though The Shortest Story is a short song, the whole experience felt longer than a Proust novel. After an eternity, we arrived at the end and George punctuated the final verse, '...nothing left to do but DIE!' It was over. The applause, I have to say, was not deafening. There was a slight pause. Then another. Then another. Finally, some tepid clapping was heard. It was the most relieved applause I've ever heard; they were clapping because it was over. I never accompanied George again. I bear Chapin's memory no ill will; he was passionate about fighting world hunger and put his money and efforts where his mouth was. I'm sure he's in the heavens right now serenading numerous winged spirits with Taxi and Cat's In The Cradle while St Peter keeps requesting 30,000 Pounds Of Bananas because it makes him laugh. But there's no way any cloud-walking agents of the Lord ever allow him to sing The Shortest Story. I should know; I was there. The Song |
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Youth truth beauty fame boredom and a bottle of pills | |
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| FamousGroupie | Jul 28 2009, 07:12 AM Post #113 |
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Obsessive Saddo Fangirl
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The Christmas Shoes Released 2000 Sometimes the best intentions are the catalyst that triggers the fission bomb. This is why the most diabolically depressing songs began as a righteous effort at striking an emotional chord with the masses while their creators are clueless to the horror they've created. Think Dr. Frankenstein gazing down at his monster and seeing Adonis. Think Kurt Cobain looking at Courtney Love and seeing Courtney Cox. Think a Christian group writing a song about a boy buying a pair of shoes for his dying mother and thinking it's spiritually uplifting. Think again. I set out to find the most depressing song ever written and I'm certain I found it. It makes Bobby Goldsboro's Honey sound like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's more depressing than Jim Morrison puking in front of a naked Indian in a Paris hotel room. It's more depressing than Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson singing a duet of Danny Boy while jamming syringes into each other's eyes. It's more depressing than The Cure's entire career. It's more depressing then that mind-fucking Harry Chapin malnutrition song. It's the most depressing song ever written because it's long, criminally insufferable and, worst of all, Christmas themed, which means we will always hear it during the Yuletide season year after year. It's The Christmas Shoes. I was blissfully unaware of The Christmas Shoes until someone told me about a song she always heard in department stores during the Christmas holidays, floating down from overhead along with Amy Grant, Burl Ives and Christy Lane. It's about a little boy buying a pair of shoes for his dying mother, she said, and it's really depressing. Hm, I thought, little boy, dying mother, a gift of shoes...sounds like a bad idea! I'm there! Finding The Christmas Shoes was easy. Listening to it was not. After just one spin, I went into the sort of shock normally associated with survivors of asteroid collisions. I couldn't quite comprehend what I'd just heard. It was such a misfire it could sink an aircraft carrier. Worse yet, the thought of this song being played constantly around the holiday season was just too terrifying for me to comprehend. After much Google research, I uncovered a saga so twisted it resembled a Hitchcock movie by way of the Book of Revelations. The Christmas Shoes is the work of the contemporary Christian group Newsong. They've recorded over 13 albums and are very popular in the faith-based Christian market. In 1999, group leader Eddie Carswell found a story that was circulating around the Internet entitled 'The Golden Christmas Shoes'. An anonymous author wrote a first-person account of something he allegedly witnessed at a Target shopping centre in Houston (I used to live in Houston and, yes, there is a Target there). Though nobody knows who wrote it, most people still insist it's true. In 'The Golden Christmas Shoes', the writer tells of wearily standing in a long line waiting to check out. It is five days before Christmas and he's feeling burnt out from all the stress of shopping and obligatory gift giving. The following is supposedly what transpired next: In front of me were two small children - a boy of about 10 and a younger girl about 5. The boy wore a ragged coat. Enormously large, tattered tennis shoes jutted far out in front of his much too short jeans. He clutched several crumpled dollar bills in his grimy hands. The girl's clothing resembled her brother's. Her head was a matted mess of curly hair. Reminders of an evening meal showed on her small face. She carried a beautiful pair of shiny, gold house slippers. As the Christmas music sounded in the store's stereo system, the girl hummed along off-key but happily. When we finally approached the checkout register, the girl carefully placed the shoes on the counter. She treated them as though they were a treasure. The clerk rang up the bill. 'That will be $6.09,' she said. The boy laid his crumpled dollars atop the stand while he searched his pockets. He finally came up with $3.12. 'I guess we will have to put them back,' he bravely said. 'We will come back some other time, maybe tomorrow.' With that statement, a soft sob broke from the little girl. 'But Jesus would have loved those shoes,' she cried. 'Well, we'll go home and work some more. Don't cry. We'll come back,' he said. Quickly I handed $3.00 to the cashier. These children had waited in line for a long time. And, after all, it was Christmas. Suddenly a pair of arms came around me and a small voice said, 'Thank you, Sir.' 'What did you mean when you said Jesus would like the shoes?' I asked. The small boy answered, 'Our mommy is sick and going to Heaven. Daddy said she might go before Christmas to be with Jesus.' The girl spoke: 'My Sunday school teacher said the streets in Heaven are shiny gold, just like these shoes. Won't mommy be beautiful walking on those streets to match these shoes?' My eyes flooded as I looked into her tear streaked face. 'Yes,' I answered, 'I am sure she will.' Silently I thanked God for using these children to remind me of the true spirit of giving. I know I'll be branded a heartless heretic but if any of you actually believe this story, I have wonderful tales of reincarnated rabbits and Jersey devils to regale you with. Never mind his Dickensian clothing, how many ten-year-old boys say declarative sentences like, 'We will have to put them back. We will come back, maybe tomorrow.' How about a five-year-old saying, 'the streets in Heaven are shiny gold, just like these shoes. Won't mommy be beautiful walking on those streets to match these shoes?' I can tell right now who wrote this story: somebody who's never been around a ten and a five year old. Whether or not Eddie Carswell believed the story is a moot point. He felt compelled to adapt 'The Golden Christmas Shoes' into a song, one for which he wouldn't have to share any royalties with the author. He and bandmate Leonard Ahlstrom put together a treacly ballad they entitled simply The Christmas Shoes and included it on their 2000 CD release Sheltering Tree. The song was first played as a single on a Christian radio station in St Louis and, supposedly, it was swamped with calls. The Christmas Shoes eventually broke into the mainstream market and topped the Adult Contemporary charts. (I've no idea what 'Adult Contemporary' signifies other than it's contemporary music purchased by people who are adults.) Following the mainstream success of the song, Newsong switched labels and re-released it in 2001 as the title cut on their Christmas holiday album The Christmas Shoes. It, too, was a hit. From here on, the song became a Perfect Storm assault weapon. First, Nashville author Donna Van Liere adapted it into a novella of the same name and it became a New York Times bestseller. Then Hollywood came a-callin' and CBS produced a two-hour-long TV movie based on a book that was based on a song that based on a story written by a guy who fibs a lot. The Christmas Shoes starring Rob Lowe premiered on 21 December 2001 and drew 17 million viewers. It's been re-aired ever December since. The Christmas Shoes had been a phenomenon and I'd slept through the entire thing. The Christmas Shoes begins in prototypical AC ballad form, with processed MIDI piano and nylon-string guitar playing a cloying intro until vocalist Billy Goodwin begins. 'It was almost Christmas time,' he sings, telling of standing in line at a department store to check out and finding it hard to get in the Christmas spirit. From here, The Christmas Shoes follows the Internet story almost exactly, the exception being there's a lone boy in line ahead of him. Goodwin points out how dirty the boy is and that his clothes were old and worn. The unkempt lad has a pair of shoes in his hands and when he finally reaches the cashier, the man overhears the boy's sad tale of woe, how his daddy says there's not much time left for mommy. All he wants is to bring the shoes to her so she can look beautiful 'if mama meets Jesus tonight'. (Who knew the Messiah was such a stickler for footwear?) The little boy dumps a hoard of pennies (more theatrical than crumpled bills) and the cashier counts them. Naturally, there's not enough and the kid turns to the man behind him, explaining how mama always did without just to make 'Christmas good at our house'. Now she's on her deathbed and all he wants is to buy her the shoes for her last Christmas. As his Grinch facade melts, the man hands the boy some money and watches his cherubic face light up. 'Mama's gonna look great,' the child tells him (she'd better or else Jesus is going to be very very angry). The song moves into a bridge as the man declares how he's 'caught a glimpse of Heaven's love'. See, it was God who sent this little boy to him for the sole purpose of showing the meaning of Christmas. Meanwhile the dirty, ragged-looking boy runs off alone and unaccompanied, something this moron fails to notice since he's too busy congratulating himself for learning to enjoy Christmas again. The chorus returns and damned if it's not a choir of children's voices singing, 'Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my mama, please...' There's not enough insulin in the world to combat this lethal dose of confection that drips like snow slush from a dead birch tree. I heaved so hard, my shoes came up. Though I've endured the most violent nihilistic musical crud ever conceived, none of it holds a candle to the Krakatoa-sized cataclysm that is The Christmas Shoes. What throws me into the volcano about both the song and the apocryphal story that inspired it is their insufferable smugness and ludicrous story-telling. What father sends his little boy to a department store by himself in threadbare clothing to buy a pair of shoes when mom's about to shuffle off any minute? Is the guy a crack addict? Does he have a drug lab going in the kitchen? What's this about anyway? Meanwhile, the narrator has to be the most clueless dip this side of Inspector Clouseau. If you were standing in a checkout line and a filthy child resembling Oliver Twist was in front of you with no adult accompanying him, wouldn't you, oh I don't know, NOTIFY SECURITY? Not this genius. He just tosses the kid a few bucks and then thanks God for showing him 'a sign of Heaven's love'. This was Heaven's great idea? Afflict a child's mother with a terminal disease, then send him to Target by himself to buy her pair of shoes without enough money for the sole purpose of making some self-righteous jerk feel good about himself? Couldn't he at least offer the kid a ride? The fact that The Christmas Shoes is a well-loved song doesn't alter my conclusion that it's depressing manipulative swill that frankly isn't very original. The lyrics simply copy a fraudulent story that itself is a pale imitation of the classic Christmas story The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell. A sublime and beautiful tale, The Littlest Angel is so moving it would make rocks weep and instils a much more powerful message of giving than a thousand tales of Yuletide Florsheims. This holiday season, please read The Littlest Angel aloud to your children and forget you ever heard the condescending depressing bilge of The Christmas Shoes. I hate this song. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. The Song |
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3:38 AM Nov 27
