Thread by @kwdarby

THE GAME’S AFOOT: Stump Katie! All right, I’m going to go old school with mine. You almost certainly know OF Harry Chapin— “Cat’s in the Cradle” and if you’re particularly savvy, “Taxi.” So I bet you know him. But I bet you don’t know how best songs—

For example, “Better Place to Be” is one of the saddest short stories I know. It’s nearly eight minutes long but completely captivating: a man tells a waitress the story of a date he thought was going well, but when he went out to grab breakfast, she left.

Sure, with different words and tone, that could be Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia.” But it couldn’t be more different. The primary character— though it doesn’t seem like it initially— is the waitress/bartender, who desperately wants to connect and provide comfort.

But she’s lonely, and he’s lonely. They both start moving toward each other, not out of love, but out of sheer self-loathing. Can you imagine, after hearing a story about a man who is still very much hung up on a previous woman, saying THESE WORDS?

“Her voice came out as something like a sigh.
She said "I wish that I was beautiful, or that you were halfway blind.
And I wish I weren't so damned fat, I wish that you were mine.
And I wish that you'd come with me, when I leave for home.
For we both know all about loneliness..."

I’m going to throw three more songs out as “better than “Cat’s in the Cradle” and #willingtobetyoudontknowit. “Mr. Tanner” kills me, as an artist. He sings just because he loves to, and everyone tells him that he should make it his vocation. Of course, a life in the arts...

Mr. Tanner acknowledges “music was his life/ it was not his livelihood/and it made him feel so happy, made him feel so good,” he finds peace in that. Once rejected professionally, the song asserts he never sings again—“except softly to himself, while sorting through the clothes.”

Artistically, I know this feeling. The more it becomes a job, the less beautiful it feels. Why do we do this to ourselves? Reminds me of a favorite @joshritter line, “I’m singing for the love of it/ Have mercy on the man who sings to be adored.” Mr. Tanner is the former.

I love the story in “W.O.L.D.,” a song about a DJ who has given his life to music and becoming the voice coming out of your stereo. He’s done so, though, to the exclusion of anything else: he even loses his family. And he ends the song at a different radio station.

Finally, #betyoudontknow “I Wanna Learn a Love Song,” a story told so quickly you almost don’t fully comprehend how much is going on: a bored housewife wants to learn guitar, and her husband hires some young guy to come teach her. She is not as interested in guitar as it seems.

You have to move quick to get so much done from “This old six string was all I had to keep my belly still” to the chorus where she says, “I wanna learn a love song/ Full of happy things/ I wanna learn a love song/ ...before you go away.” It doesn’t take long before they act:

“Well, I guess you know what happened
God, I never been so clean
Yes, I feel like I'm working in a Hollywood movie
Or living out a good bad dream
And all them pinup girls in that tinsel world
Never touched me like she can
It took another man's wife...to make this boy a man.”

The song actually ends with a softly sung, “I guess you know I stayed.” This is a dramatic monologue set to music— he often jokingly introduced it as singing “for” his wife because he never “did it to her.” Getting a story that complicated and well-told in four minutes is HARD.

So, my vote for #betyoudontknow is not a specific artist, but Harry Chapin’s back catalogue. You could easily read these as flash fiction or prose poetry. They’re all impressive and maybe a little too literary— perhaps why the ones that found success had more relatable focus.

Chapin’s narrators didn’t NEED to be relatable. They are human. They are artists who can’t handle rejection; lonely people falling together out of convenience; people who sold their souls to their jobs; unrepentant adulterers. And somehow, every single one feels completely real.