Many of John Prine's songs are laugh-out-
loud funny. He has lyrics that get a chuckle out of me every time I hear them, and I've been listening to him since I met Andy, yea these 17 1/2 years! (When you start dating a guy and he has at least a dozen albums—yes, albums, this was the 80s!—by someone you've never heard of, you take notice. Soon enough, I was just as big a fan.) But John has other songs that can bring tears to my eyes just as easily. Take "Angel from Montgomery" (popularized by Bonnie Raitt, but he himself does it great). What could be more depressing than imagining a middle-aged woman sitting around, remembering her lost youth, waiting for her husband to get home:
There's flies in the kitchen, I can hear 'em there buzzing
And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today.
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say?
Or how about this heart-breaking description of the end of a relationship, from "Far from Me":
Well, ya know, she still laughs with me
But she waits just a second too long.
and then:
"Will you still see me tomorrow?"
"No, I got too much to do."
Well, a question ain't really a question
If you know the answer too.
I won't even go into "Sam Stone" or "Hello in There," which are absolutely crushing.
At this point I intended to close on an upbeat note, by sharing with you some of the previously mentioned humorous lyrics, but it turns out they look really corny written out. So I shan't; you'll have to go listen yourself.
Comments