I\u2019ve been learning a bunch of Tom Waits songs and in the course of doing so, some of my cohorts and I began to wonder: what is the saddest Tom Waits song? There are several excellent candidates.
\nGeorgia Lea, for instance, tells the story of a street kid who is found dead in a ditch and asks the question \u2018Why wasn\u2019t God watching?\u201d
\nAlice is sung from the perspective of Lewis Carrol and addresses his inappropriate obsession with the real life inspiration for Alice in Wonderland.
\nBut my vote is for A Little Rain. It\u2019s sung from the perspective of a grave digger who is surrounded by surreal characters. He seems to be trying to keep a stiff upper lip about his general situation, and is thankful that the rain makes his job easier by softening the ground. Then the last verse:
\n\u201cShe was 15 years old
\nAnd never seen the ocean
\nShe climbed into a van
\nWith a vagabond
\nAnd the last thing she said
\nWas \u2018I love you mom\u2019
\nAnd a little rain
\nNever hurt no one\u201d
\nBut this made me wonder. Is there a sadder song than A Little Rain? It doesn’t have to be restricted to Tom Waits but I\u2019m not talking about some maudlin thing like Seasons in the Sun, or some country weeper where the guy runs over his own hound dog with his pickup on his way back his pappy\u2019s funeral or something. (I suppose \u201cmaudlin\u201d is probably in the eye of the beholder and you might consider A Little Rain to be maudlin, but I\u2019m interested in hearing what you consider to be a truly sad song. If your answer is Seasons in the Sun, make your case).
\nDelivery and nuance seem like critical issues here.
\nThe only one that hits me like A Little Rain is Galveston by Glenn Campbell.
\nSo, what is the saddest song?
\nPS, TGIF!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been learning a bunch of Tom Waits songs and in the course of doing so, some of my cohorts and I began to wonder: what is the saddest Tom Waits song? There are several excellent candidates. Georgia Lea, for instance, tells the story of a street kid who is found dead in a ditch […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}