TTT #50: Oldies That Are Kinda Messed Up When You Pay Attention To The Lyrics

Fifty episodes.  Crazy.  I still don't know what I will do for the 52nd.  I feel like that will mark a year and we should do something special.  Hmm...

Anyway, this week I decided to do a playlist of songs from the 50's and 60's that, once you dig a little deeper, might not be about what you think, or are a little darker than you had originally thought.  This was an interesting one.  Enjoy.



TTT #50 Playlist
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Beauty Is Overrated

If You Wanna Be Happy - Jimmy Soul (Lyrics)

This song, if you don't know the lyrics, might seem like a guide to happiness.  Which it is.  However, the song's advice is to never marry a pretty woman as she will leave you broken and alone.  You should always marry an ugly woman because she can cook and you are the only one that will want her.

That's messed up.



Here, There...Everywhere

The Wanderer - Dion & The Belmonts (Lyrics)

This song is about a guy who goes from town to town using women and leaving them without even caring to learn their names.  Plenty of that in today's music, but the 50's?  Geez.  I thought the 50's was all McCarthyism and rainbows.

In the words of Jay Z, an obvious adherent to the Dion music model, "Thug em, F**k em, Love em, Leave em, but I don't F**king feed em."  True now as it was in the 50's apparently.



Tit For Tat

Runaround Sue - Dion & The Belmonts (Lyrics)

I wonder if Dion was the Wanderer before or after Runaround Sue crushed his heart and went tramping around town like a bicycle.  It seems working your way through many "beaus" & "skirts" was just the way it was done.  Plus, let me just say look at those guys.  You didn't need to be pretty in the 50's, you needed to be talented.  Now, just the opposite.  Food for thought.



*violins*

Mr. Lonely - Bobby Vinton (Lyrics)

Now most people who know this song know it's about being lonely.  Either that or they really like Akon.  Anyway, it is about a soldier that is off to war and receives no letters.  No one cares.  That's why he's lonely.  It is plainly obvious, he's not hiding it with clever word play.  Still.  Sad as shit.  I wonder if he was ever actually a soldier...|Google Break|...He was.  2 years in the Army.  He was a chaplain's assistant though, is that really that scary do you think?  Doubtful he was sitting in a foxhole somewhere being all sad...

I'm callin bullshit.

It's gets a little darker here on out...



Brender & Eddie

The Leader Of The Pack - The Shangri-Las (Lyrics)


This song is about a girl who dates a guy who is the leader of his motorcycle gang.  Her father disapproves, as any father would, and tells her to break up with him.  So the, obviously still in High School, Betty breaks it off with Jimmy.   He cries a little bit, goes driving off in the rain and dies.  Yep, dead as a door nail.  Donor-cycle.


Who knew that a relationship with the leader of a motorcycle gang that you met in a candy store would end in heart ache?

Side Fact:  A young Billy Joel played session piano on the demo tracks for Leader of the Pack. Noodle Stories.



Ahhhh Racism

Running Bear - Johnny Preston (Lyrics)

This song is about two Native Americans that go by the name of Running Bear and Little White Dove.  All of the stereotypical Native American stereotypes that litter this song aside, it's a typical 50's love story.  Seeing as how neither of them could swim, or wait for that matter, they decided to jump into an unswimmable torrent of death and destruction.   What do you know they died and went to "that happy hunting ground".  Terrible.

Honorable Racist-y Mention:  Ling Ting Tong - The Five Keys



Death Deather Deathest

Last Kiss - J. Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers (Lyrics)


This here song, famously covered by Pearl Jam, is about a couple that went on a date, got into a wreck and with blood running into the guy's eyes and the girl's head in his arms they kissed their final kiss and she shed her mortal coil.  That's right, dead.  More death.   Seems to be a lot of that going around.  Plus he also believes she will be going to heaven, so he has to be good so he can see her again one day.  I'm not sure that's a good reason to be good.  You should just be good.  Just saying...

Doesn't that drummer look chipper as hell?



Cowboy Classic

El Paso - Marty Robbins - (Lyrics)


Unrequited love.  Guys always get in to deep shit over unrequited love.  So he was in love with a bar maid in El Paso.  She didn't feel the same.  Another guy came in, was drinking with his Mexican hottie so he challenged him to a duel to impress her.  Shot him dead right there.  Then he freaked and ran.  Real manly.  The town formed a posse and chased him.  So he thought his best course of action after being chased by a murderer-chasing-lynching posse.  He probably could have gotten away...

But he had to go back.  Had to see his lady.  So he got a "deep burning pain" in his side.  Know what that was?  A bullet.  Yeah, he went back to the city where the posse was.  They shot him a bunch of times and then he as he lay in the dirt dying Felina rolls up and kisses him as he died.  Un. Requited. Love.  It's a bitch.




Well that's it this week.  Let me know what you think...thought...whatever...

KKNY signing off.