There’s nothing I love more than a good old fashioned murder ballad. Maybe it’s the juicy juxtaposition of the details of a grisly crime uttered sotto voce style over a plaintive dirge. Or maybe I’m just sick. But this isn’t about me. This week TDB brings you modern day murder ballads from some of today’s hottest new artists! You get hangings, stabbings, scorned lovers and much much more. This very special collection is only available through TDB and is not sold in any stores. And if you act now, we’ll include matricide as a bonus gift!
I’m sure there are entire doctoral theses on the distant origins of murder ballads but more recent history almost universally cites Johnny Cash and Nick Cave as pioneers of the modern genre. Cave’s haunting duet with Kylie Minogue, “Where the Wild Roses Grow”, ends an obsessive love affair Crispin Glover style with a stoning by the river. Cash is a different breed of cat and in “Delia’s Gone” exemplifies an Appalachian fetish for firearms and the ‘wife as chattel’ meme where you take them out in back of the barn and shoot them for misbehavin’.
Both are brilliant examples of the genre and the quintessential murder ballad paints a vivid portrait of the killer and his crime. Okkervil River’s “Westfall” is the prison diary of a small-town boy grown up and grown bored enough to kill. With creepy details like “One was named Lori. That’s what the story said next week in The Guardian…”, it’s the dispassionate chronicle of a psychopath. In classic murder ballad style, the song builds to the eventual capture of the killer who, paraded out of the jailhouse, tells the inquisitive crowd that, “evil don’t look like anything.” Take that, Nancy Grace.
Former Palace Brother, Will Oldham, dons his Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy moniker and reaches back to 18th century Ireland with an update of the traditional “Molly Bawn.” In an episode that makes Dick Cheney look like Annie Oakley, poor Molly Bawn is mistaken for a swan and shot by her fiancé in a tragic hunting accident. I’m serious. This is probably more accurately called a manslaughter ballad with the possibility of time served and probation.
And in what starts out as a childhood game but presumably ends in tragedy, Sonny Bono’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” is given guitar god treatment by Terry Reid circa 1968. More metaphoric than literal, it’s representative of an era of artful phrases in music. Thirty years ago euphemisms like ’squeeze my lemon’ garnered a knowing wink from the hipsters while today we get 20 year old Hillary Duff cooing “touch me boy don’t you make me wait.” Ah, good times.
- Xavier Van Zandt
MP3 :::
Terry Reid – Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
Bonnie Prince Billy - Molly Bawn
Okkervil River – Westfall
