Where. To. Begin?
- "Dress Blues," which memorializes a soldier killed in The War on Terror.
- "Alabama Pines," narrated by someone whose life has gone wrong in one way after another, and who just wants to go back home.
- "Speed Trap Town": Narrator's father is slowly dying of heart failure. Narrator makes a final farewell and abandons him.
- "White Man's World": Narrator is trapped in poverty, and fears that his daughter may end up the same way, but still feels guilt over how his country has treated blacks and Indians even worse. This song, at least, allows for a World Half Full:There's no such thing as someone else's war
Your creature comforts aren't the only things worth fighting for
Still breathing, it's not too late
We're all carrying one great burden, sharing one fate - "If We Were Vampires" details a married couple realizing that they cannot be together forever because one of them will die first and the survivor will have to carry on without them until their own death.It's knowing that this can't go on forever
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone
Maybe we'll get forty years together
But one day I'll be gone
Or one day you'll be gone - "Dreamsicle", which details a divorce in a family. In the second chorus, the narrator's father breaks his promise of seeing him play in a basketball game, breaking his heart.
- "Songs That She Sang in the Shower," set in the aftermath of a breakup, is about missing the little details of life together.And the songs that she sang in the shower all ring in my ear
Like "Wish You Were Here"
How I wish you were here
And experience robs me of hope that she'll ever come home
So I'm stuck on my own
I'm stuck on my own - "Goddamn Lonely Love", a song Isbell wrote while with Drive By Truckers, is an achingly melancholy song about drowning one's sorrows to cope with being separated from a lover. There's some Reality Subtext here, too: Isbell wrote the song at the height of his struggles with alcohol.I got green and I got the blues
And everyday there's a little less difference between the two
So I belly-up and disappear
Well, I ain't really drowning 'cause I see the beach from here
I could take a Greyhound home, but when I got there it'd be gone
Along with everything a home is made up of
So I'll take two of what you're having, and I'll take all of what you got
To kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love - Jason and Amanda's performance of Warren Zevon's "Mutineer"
on The Late Show with David Letterman. It's a touching, but devastating Call-Back to Zevon's final appearance on the same stage (and to Dave's tribute to him after his death). - "Elephant" is a stark portrayal of trying to be there for someone dying of cancer. "Trying" being the operative word.She said, "Andy, you crack me up"
Seagrams in a coffee cup
Sharecropper eyes and her hair almost all gone
When she was drunk she made cancer jokes
Made up her own doctor's notes
Surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone - His 2023 album Weathervanes added a few more entries to this catalogue. The closest thing to a lead single, "King of Oklahoma," is written from the perspective of a construction worker who developed an opioid addiction after an injury, and now can't hold onto a legitimate job or the people he loves.She used to wake me up with coffee every morning
And I'd hear her homemade house shoes slide across the floor
She used to make me feel like the king of Oklahoma
But nothing makes me feel like much of nothing anymore - Also from Weathervanes, the narrator of "Volunteer" has gone through quite the Trauma Conga Line.They'd fight about money, they'd fight about fighting
They'd fight about nothing at all
The car was still running when the deputy found them
At the Shell by the Gunbarrel Mall
(next verse)
I cried when I missed 'em, got lost in the system
The foster homes passed me around
The last one was nice, but I ran away twice
And they gave up on tracking me down
