Talk:Teenage tragedy song

What Hurts the Most
Would the Rascal Flatts song, "What Hurts the Most," qualify as a teenage tragedy song? I ask this because of the subject matter of the video (a young girl mourning the death of her boyfriend, before switching over to their courtship and the events leading to the boyfriend's fatal car accident); I also seem to remember that, much like "Leader of the Pack," the original video that aired on CMT had a conservative father who disapproved of his daughter's boyfriend for being on the wrong side of the tracks (the mother being more open-minded) and in a fit of grief-filled rage tells her father (after learning of the boy's death) she hated him. The events leading to the boy's death, from what I could tell, were similar to "Leader of the Pack" (the father telling his daughter the boy must go, they break up and he drives off in anger, she tells him to slow down and then the crash). Briguy52748 17:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)]] (P.S. — Sorry for the long intro, but what's your take on the song?)

Too many examples
Does this article really need so many examples? It seems more like a list of every song with a tragic theme of some sort than an illustration of the teenage tragedy genre. "Leah" speaks of a "lost love" but not directly of any tragedy. "Seasons in the Sun" is the story of a dying man, whose original lyrics make it clear he is more than a teenager. Maybe someone could trim this down to the examples necessary to define the genre. Gr8white (talk) 02:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Incomplete list???? Is that someone's idea of a joke? The list needs to be trimmed by about half or more, or better yet, the list should be eliminated altogether and a few examples incorporated into the narrative of the article, which is woefully inadequate now. If someone wants to compile a "list of tragic songs" that should be a separate article. Gr8white (talk) 06:33, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:Embedded_list Can't bear to watch this anymore, instead of an article about the topic it has degenerated into a repository for the addition of anything with a remote connection, the vast majority of which don't even belong in the genre according to the definition. Gr8white (talk) 04:01, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Why isn't KISS' Detroit Rock City on this list? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.129.135.69 (talk) 15:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

This article seriously misrepresents the topic and several contributors have misinterpreted the idea of the genre by ignoring the tropes that make a song a teen tragedy. (Gunfighter ballads and the Jethro Tull example are NOT teen tragedies! Certain folk songs and murder ballads MIGHT be considered as such, but are also not part of this genre, as it had a specific timeframe. The style has been widely copied and parodied ever since.) There is certainly enough critical literature out there to support a solid description and delineation of the genre. The article consists almost entirely of original content and opinion, save for a reference for one song (!!) and 2 external articles. it is all unsourced. How this ever passed approval is beyond me. I propose researching the lyrics of the questionable ones, sourcing those that still apply, and then removing many of the songs on the list. Is there a proper way to do this if deletions are contested or discussed? Moving them to a talk page (this one, or their own if they have wiki articles)? Full disclosure: I'm working on an article for a Rhino compilation LP of classic TT songs. Dano67 (talk) 14:19, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

I deleted some of the examples (El Paso, Elton John's 2 songs, and Green Green Grass of Home, for starters), and added some description that hopefully delineates the genre/musical style, and some of its defining features, and will follow up with sources. I hope this helps to weed out the off-topic and trivial inclusions. Dano67 (talk) 16:00, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

PS my article Teenage Tragedies is now approved and up. Dano67 (talk) 16:03, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

…. …. …. There are now 30 fewer Examples on the list, all noted below. Possible re-ups for some of them, though; take a look.Dano67 (talk) 08:04, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Removed/Added: Teenage Tragedy Song Examples list

ADDED (with sources): "Valerie" and "Nightmare", also sources given for "Last Kiss" and Julie Brown.

The following were REMOVED; but have possible relevance to the topic, if sourced; or are tangential to the genre, lyrically or stylistically. ---14 songs:


 * "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" || Johnny Cash || 1958 || U.S. Country #1
 * "Leah" || Roy Orbison || 1962 || U.S. #25, Can. #7 ---((restored to list 4.10.16 -- Dano67 (talk) 12:08, 11 April 2016 (UTC)))
 * "In the Ghetto" || Elvis Presley || 1969 || U.S. #3, UK #2, Can. #2
 * "Once You Understand" || Think || 1971 || U.S. #23, Can. #48
 * "Emma" || Hot Chocolate || 1974 || U.S. #8, Can. #5
 * "Back of My Mind" || Breathless || 1980 || … Tells from a bereaved boyfriend's viewpoint of a young girl's death while undergoing an abortion.
 * "Days of Graduation" || Drive-By Truckers || 2001 || First-person narrative about a fatal car crash the night before the victims' high school graduation.
 * "Crazy Cat Corner" || Gene Summers || 2002
 * "Blasphemous Rumours" || Depeche Mode || 1984 || Story of a 16 year old girl who survives a suicide attempt, only to be run over by a car and killed two years later.
 * "Teen Love" || No Trend || 1984
 * "Teenage Tragedy" || Dive || 2009
 * "Joey" || Sugarland || 2009
 * "Death of a Surfer Girl" || L.Stadt || 2010
 * "White Is Red" || Death From Above 1979 || 2014

I listened to all of the songs on the bloated list, except two that could not be found, and remain. 'Crazy Cat Corner' is too upbeat (?), i.e. not a ballad; even if it is a 50s-styled rockabilly song ending with a car crash. 'Teen Love' and 'Days of Graduation' share many themes central to the genre, although their narrative tone is coolly detached i.e. not melodramatic or sad. 'Teen Idle' makes the list for being spot-on lyrically although it is miles removed sonically from the originals.
 * A few rationales:

Some could be re-included outside of the 'Examples' list as 'Inspired by' or 'Related songs'. 'Once You Understand' is a good example. Others may simply not fit. Defining the genre by its specific and common elements may be the key -- as well as, if possible, removing the 'This is an incomplete list' note, as this work is an attempt to make the article more definitive and not so open-ended as to what *should* or *could* be on it. Even though I applied some critical thinking here, ALL should still be sourced. I have done so for two of the examples, plus the two songs I added myself. I will source the lead section further then work on the rest of the article. I adjure and encourage other editors to take a crack at adding references to each of the songs as well.)

Now here are the bad, misguided, headed-for-an-untimely-end entries, imo (16 in all):

REMOVED AS UNRELATED TO THE TOPIC

Dano67 (talk) 08:04, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * "El Paso" || Marty Robbins || 1959 ||
 * "Green, Green Grass of Home" || Curly Putman || 1965 ||
 * "Honey" || Bobby Goldsboro || 1968 ||
 * "The Visitation" || White Noise || 1969 ||
 * "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" and "Candle in the Wind" || || Elton John || 1973
 * "Cherish" || Kool & the Gang ||
 * "A Girl Like Emmylou" || Southern Pacific || 1986 || Top 20 country hit
 * "The Freshmen (song)" || The Verve Pipe || 1997 || Written about a freshman girl committing suicide after finding out she was pregnant. (well, not quite---ed.)
 * "Adam's Song" || Blink-182 || 1999 ||
 * "April 20th" || Yellowcard || 1999 || Written in dedication to the friends and families of victims of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre (that was a tragedy, but the song is not 'teenage tragedy' material.
 * "Not Now" || Blink-182 || 2004 ||
 * "His Pecs Were So God" || Death Falcon || 2006 ||
 * "Who Knew" || P!nk || 2006 || (nice song, still doesn't belong here)
 * "Perfect" || Vanessa Amorosi || 2007 || Australia #4, UK #82
 * "The One That Got Away" || Katy Perry || 2010 || While this song's lyrics do not necessarily suggest a death, the accompanying music video has the man dying in a car accident. -- and … two years later no one has clarified or sourced this. … oh well.


 * - thank you for your work on this. I think that removing some of the most marginal examples is a big improvement - but of course more work needs to be done on sourcing.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:26, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I've done some rewriting of the lead section and added some initial sources for that material; as well as marking several places with 'citations needed', and restoring the Roy Orbison song "Leah" to the Examples list. I will leave it alone for now, while seeking some scholarly sources for some of the connections both to folk music and to contemporary mores of the 50s and 60s.

I also removed the Jethro Tull entry from Parodies section as, despite the description given, irrelevant or marginal. Here it is:

…. *The song "Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die!" by Jethro Tull is another homage and parody of the theme. The lyrics tell the tale of a now (1976) old rocker who, while "living in the past" and refusing to "grow up" like his friends did, suffers a motorcycle accident and meets his certain death. (Although, in the following song of the concept album, it is revealed that he survived.) The music (featuring a string quartet) and lyrics are noted for being overly dramatic for the sake of dark humor.

Dano67 (talk) 21:17, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Oh My Darling, Clementine
Wouldn't that be considered a very early example of a teenage tragedy song? Stonemason89 (talk) 14:14, 27 July 2009 (UTC)


 * There is a need for a well-sourced paragraph describing the development of this type of song from the folk ballad tradition, and a song like "Clementine" could well form part of that story. But, we need reliable (probably scholarly) sources.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:29, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the folk process and the folk tradition, I trust there is some scholarship that applies, but so far I haven't seen much aside from a few stray blog comments on "Barbara Allen" and other songs sharing the same themes and style I removed unsourced and irrelevant material on Stephen Foster, "Tom Dooley" and other off-topic examples (below) from this article; but that path definitely needs more exploration. Sources such as the 'Murder Ballad Monday' section of the Sing Out! site might yield some connections. (I sourced a post there for the article on Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).

REMOVED: UNSOURCED PASSAGE; OFF-TOPIC SONGS ·The Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" are considered sometimes teenage tragedies, due to some of the lyrics talking about a young man about to be executed. Some of the songs in The Who's Tommy are also considered of this genre (though the protagonist, Tommy Walker, does not die, but rather suffers from mistreatment). The Shel Silverstein song, "25 Minutes to Go", tells of a prisoner counting off how many minutes he has left to live, similar to his other song, "Boa Constrictor". The song "Joe Bean" by Johnny Cash tells of a prisoner who is sentenced to die on his 20th birthday; Cash has also covered both of Silverstein's songs. Dano67 (talk) 14:58, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

REMOVED : SECTION (as unsourced/possibly irrelevant) under 'Precedents' -- Two songs by Stephen Foster, the 19th century "father of American music," are said to have a similar basis. The lyrics to "Gentle Annie" long for a young sweetheart who is said, in some sources, to be inspired by the death of a young woman in an accident, and in "Beautiful Dreamer" (Foster's last song) the singer begs his beautiful dreamer to awake because 'Then will all clouds of sorrow depart'. "Gloomy Sunday", the so-called "Hungarian Suicide Song" of 1933 (recorded by Billie Holiday in 1941, among many others), also has as its theme a lament over the death of a lover.

ALSO REMOVED from EXAMPLES on 4-8-16: Do not belong. (all text as it was, from embedded list.) Dano67 (talk) 16:04, 11 April 2016 (UTC) Dano67 (talk) 16:10, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * "18 and Life" || Skid Row || 1989 || U.S. #4
 * "Hazard" || Richard Marx || 1991 || U.S. #9, UK #3, Australia #1
 * "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" || Richard Thompson || 1991 || UK #32
 * "Jeremy" || Pearl Jam || 1992 || Inspired by a high school student who killed himself in front of his classmates
 * "Jumper" || Third Eye Blind || 1997 || It's about a friend who's gay, jumping off a bridge and killing themselves.
 * "Stan" || Eminem || 2000 || UK #1, Isn't a teenager
 * "View From Heaven" || Yellowcard || 2003 || Written in memory of a close friend of the band, the drummer and co-founder of the band Inspection 12, who was killed in a car accident in 2001
 * "Star Crossed" || Scary Kids Scaring Kids || 2007 || Nobody actually dies

Hobo and the rose
can the song Hobo and the rose for Webb Pierce be considered teen tragedy? the song is told by the view of a witness--41.254.1.70 (talk) 21:44, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Seasons in the Sun
Is this really a "teenage tragedy" song? Certainly, it is "narrated" by a dying man, but there is nothing in any version I am familiar with that indicates this is a teenager and/or that he died tradgically. Indeed, it seems to me just as likely to be an old man recalling all his life on his deathbed, although I will admit when the listed version came out, I sort of interpreted it to be a soldier dying of injuries received in Vietnam Nam. But Nam was something weighing much on people's mind in those days, especially those of us who were subject to the draft. Wschart (talk) 18:14, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Review of 'issues'
How does one re-submit an article for review, over the 'multiple issues' that have been addressed? or perhaps it is not quite there yet? Ghmyrtle -- what do you think? Dano67 (talk) 17:07, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Per H:MTR, it seems to me that the issues have been substantially addressed, so I'll remove the tags and see if anyone objects.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:36, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

but but
What about The Homecoming Queen Has Got a Gun 100.15.117.34 (talk) 23:46, 28 July 2023 (UTC)


 * .. it's in the parody section! Dano67 (talk) 05:03, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Beatles Picture
The first picture a reader sees is the Beatles, but they're never mentioned in the article. If they're not even on the list of examples, shouldn't we replace that with a band more relevant to the topic? -Warhorus (talk) 13:30, 3 June 2024 (UTC)