Previously in this series: Who is the saddest girl?
If there is one thing the current crop of indie rocker neo-stompist lumber-throwback-jacks loves to do, it’s sing about dead women. Not just any women: historical dead women, and the deader the better, whether they fling themselves off of a lighthouse or a crumbling keep or some sort of whimsical jigging apparatus. One can’t turn on one’s radiograph without hearing about burned seamstresses or strangled maidens or mangled daughters or fisherman’s wives who have thrown themselves onto the knives of jealous lovers.
These girls are all terribly, wretchedly, most tragically and palely dead. It’s awful, how dead they are. They’re in coffins and everything, from how dead they are. Their hands and lips are cold, which is unusual, because when they were alive, those were generally their warmest parts. And there is blood just everywhere, from all the dying that’s going on. Everyone is so sad, because of how dead these poor girls are.
But only one of them can be the most dead, and claim her rightful place as the Queen of Hell, where she shall receive a lavender crown and never have to wear shoes again. Who shall it be?
Song: “Holland, 1945″
Songwriter: Neutral Milk Hotel
How lovingly detailed are the circumstances of her demise? “The only girl I’ve ever loved/ Was born with roses in her eyes/ But then they buried her alive/ One evening, 1945/ With just her sister at her side/ And only weeks before the guns/ All came and rained on everyone.”
How dead is she? It’s Anne Frank. She’s horribly dead. Famously dead. Museum dead. World War II dead. This is as dead as dead gets.
Overall score: Not only merely dead; she’s really most sincerely dead.
Song: “Where The Wild Roses Grow”
Songwriter: Nick Cave
How lovingly detailed are the circumstances of her demise? “On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow/ And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief/ And I kissed her goodbye, said, “All beauty must die”/ And lent down and planted a rose between her teeth.”
How dead is she? It’s ambiguous. She’s definitely dead, somehow, by the end of the song, and there is a rock involved for sure, but there’s a lot of close-reading that needs to be done here.
Overall score: She’s dead, but could be deader. Is there blood? How much? Does he crush her skull? Too much is left to the listener’s imagination. We don’t even know if she’s wearing a shawl.
Song: “O Valencia!”
Songwriter: The Decemberists
How lovingly detailed are the circumstances of her demise? “All I heard was a shout/ Of your brother calling me out/ And you ran like a fool to my side/ Well the shot, it hit hard/ And your frame went limp in my arms/ And an oath of love was your dying cry/ So wait for the stone on your window, your window/ Wait by the car and we’ll, go we’ll go/ But O Valencia/ With your blood still warm on the ground.”
How dead is she? Excellently dead. She tried to run away and keep living, like an idiot, and now her blood is everywhere and her bones are gone or all floppy or whatever. Negatively affected by The Decemberists Handicap, however, since all their songs have a significant body count. It’s almost impossible to make it out of a Decemberists song alive.
Overall score: Highly dead, considering.
Song: “The Lighthouse’s Tale”
Songwriter: Nickel Creek
How lovingly detailed are the circumstances of her demise? “She’d had to leave us, my keeper he prayed for a safe return/ But when the night came, the weather to a raging storm had turned/ He watched her ship fight, but in vain against the wild and terrible wave/ In me so helpless, as dashed against the rock she met her end/ Then on the next day, my keeper found her washed up on the shore/ He kissed her cold face.”
How dead is she? Just awfully, awfully dead. It’s tremendous. Her face is cold, and she drowned next to a bunch of rocks and a lighthouse. Classic.
Overall score: The gold standard of indie death. No guns or modern weaponry, just lots and lots of drowning. Could have used a jealous lover, but that’s a minor quibble.
Song: “A Good Man is Hard To Find”
Songwriter: Sufjan Stevens
How lovingly detailed are the circumstances of her demise? “Once in the backyard, she was once like me/ She was once like me/ Twice when I killed them, they were once at peace/ They were once like me/ Hold to your gun, man and put off all your peace/ Put off all the beast.”
How dead is she? Sufjan could stand to elaborate, but he does receive bonus points for incorporating a literary hat-tip to Flannery O’Connor, who is also a dead woman.
Overall score: Somewhat dead.
Song: “What Sarah Said”
Songwriter: Death Cab for Cutie
How lovingly detailed are the circumstances of her demise? “There’s no comfort in the waiting room/ Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news/ And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads/ But I’m thinking of what Sarah said, that ‘Love is watching someone die’/ So who’s going to watch you die?”
How dead is she? For a band that calls itself Death Cab for Cutie, their back catalog is surprisingly free of deceased women. Also, her death is awfully recent. It’s full of hospitals and nurses, with hardly a stabbed harpsichordist in sight.
Overall score: Disappointing.
Song: “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”
Songwriter: Fleet Foxes
How lovingly detailed are the circumstances of her demise? “Wanderers this morning came by/ Where did they go/ Graceful in the morning light/ To banner fair/ To follow you softly/ In the cold mountain air/ Through the forest/ Down to your grave/ Where the birds wait/ And the tall grasses wave/ They do not know you anymore.”
How dead is she? Terribly, anciently dead. What the story of her death lacks in specifics, it more than makes up for in old-timey-ness. Pilgrims wandering around frigid mountains waving banners looking for bird-encrusted graves? An indie death fit for a queen.
Overall score: Solid.
Winner: Anne Frank and Neutral Milk Hotel. No girl is more dead than Anne Frank. No other girl even comes close. Oh, you drowned your best girl by the bright seaside? Watched her choke and bleed out in the dusty streets of Laredo? She’s a-moldering in the ground by the weeping willow? Let me ask you a question: is she Anne fucking goddamn dead as shit Frank? No? Not dead enough, my friend. The unquestioned champion. Fuck off with your half-dead woman.
[Image via Wikimedia Commons]
Tags: anne frank, dead girls, death, drowning, girls, indie rock, lighthouses, music, neutral milk hotel
Women’s deaths are just so artistic, you guys! Our suffering and dying sparks so many creative impulses! Doesn’t it make you proud? When your jealous boyfriend murders you, at least there’ll be a pretty song.
(I’m a folkie, which is way worse for this, but at least the dead loves are frequently male too, and often not actually dead)
Are they only mostly dead? To blathe?
They are frequently wrongly assumed to be dead, only to return after seven years with half of a love token. Sometimes they arrive on your wedding day and sweep you away.
(see: Young Hindhorn)
Sorry, that wasn’t even a real question, just an excuse to drop a Princess Bride reference. But I enjoyed your response nonetheless. 🙂
Princess Bride references are always welcome.
But, as I am a third generation folky and my grandfather was one of the (now sadly forgotten) people who helped start up the UK’s FIRST folk revival movement, I know a great deal about folk music.
And will talk about it.
For DAAAAYS.
That’s so cool! I’m sorry your grandfather was forgotten, but I’m glad he did what he did. And I’m not even British.
Back in the day people like Martin Carthy and June Tabor used to stay at his house. They probably remember him, at least. He did a lot of recording old songs and singing them at pubs and probably did a lot to keep some nearly dead ones in circulation.
It’s something I try to keep doing myself, too, but I have my own way of doing it. Like all the essays I long to write about folk music. It’s such a rich seam to mine. Gender is a particularly interesting part of it, in that while women are frequently victims they are just as frequently heroines or villains. I like it.
It’s a shame so many of the songs we know now are half-remembered and only portions of the longer songs they once were. Like Betsy Bell and Mary Gray. Three verses, and so much of the story seems untold.
Agh, I’m sorry but I have no idea who any of those people are, I guess because I’m too young and/or American. But I’m glad to hear that women are heroes and villains in a lot of the songs. We are just as good/bad as men! 😉
Martin Carthy was one of the first big names to come out of the folk revival.
Though I possibly said June Tabor when I meant someone else.
Oh, yes. So many good songs where women murder or fight for their families, or are strong and good or are wicked. So many.
The deadest girl in folk might be Caroline, from “Tescumseh Valley.” She’s immediately who I thought of when I saw this title.
Maybe I only think of her as the deadest because I first heard that song when I was, like, twelve, and it made a HUGE impression on me. I can still sing the whole thing, and sometimes want to sing it as a lullaby to my daughter (the melody is so pretty!), but…I don’t.
The girl in I am Stretched On Your Grave is pretty firmly, tragically dead.
“I am stretched on your grave
And I’ll lie here forever
If our hands they were bound
I’d be sure they’d not sever
My appletree, my brightness
It’s time we were together
For I smell of the earth and am worn by the weather”
It goes on to talk about the night they were caught outside in the snow and had to find shelter, and how good it is that they didn’t fuck so she’s still a virgin and will therefore go to heaven. It is strongly implied it was getting half-frozen that killed her, so I keep thinking ‘maybe you should have fucked! It would’ve kept her warm!’
So: Girl gets pneumonia(??) and dies, still a virgin, and guy mopes on her grave forever. Pretty dead, even for folk.
STILL A VIRGIN is the most important part, probably.
Colin Hay’s Maggie is pretty dead. Colin Hay fails to save her from herself, or from the older man who comes into her life, and then she writes him a suicide note explaining that now they can be together forever, and then she haunts the shit out of him, romantically.
Ben Fold’s Cathy is pretty dead also, and he carries her coffin (JUST LIKE HE CARRIED HER SORROWS FOR SO LONG).
I mentioned Cathy in the sad girls post! I guess she’s both, ’cause she jumps out the window mid-song… man, Cathy was super sad.
NOT indie rock but woman is definitely suuuuuuuper dead, and it’s a suuuuuper annoying song that makes me wish I were dead as well, which is exactly why I am inflicting upon everyone the reminder of its terrible nature: Pearl Jam’s rendition of “Last Kiss.”
As I googled I was reminded that there are a lot of train/car/airplane crash songs floating around! Damn. Huffpo has an entire round up slideshow, for the love of maude.
SOMEDAY we will do a post on the AMAZING 1950s/60s trends of TEEN TRAGEDY SONGS, of which Last Kiss is the crown jewel, but that day is not today.
I like Leader of the Pack best, but maybe that’s because I had the Chipmunks recording on cassette tape.
!! Somehow I spent like five years of my childhood singing that song without ever realizing that it was a TEEN TRAGEDY. They used to say it reminded them of my dead grandfather, so I never… god damn it.
I am ready for this day to come. I have been ready my whole life.
can you also do one on that era’s creeptastic trend of celebrating “girls” becoming “women” and therefore being sexually available for the older male singer? i’m looking at you, “bobby socks to stockings” and “happy birthday, sweet sixteen”. ew.
ETA: Frankie Avalon was 19 when he sang the former, and Neil Sedaka was 22 when he said “Tonight’s the night I’ve waited for / Because you’re not a baby anymore”.
oh, man, that is one of the creepier things in 50s/60s music. The number of songs that come up on my iPod when I put “sixteen” into the search is a little worrisome. Most are actually pretty innocent, but “You’re Sixteen” by Johhny Burnette came out when he was 26, and definitely part of the appeal of the girl he’s singing to is her youth (“you’re 16, you’re beautiful, and you’re mine”).
The bastard child of those creepy 50s/60s “you’re a woman now” songs is “Into the Night” by Benny Mardones. I won’t inflict it on you with a lin. But suffice to say, it is creeptastic, about a guy obsessed with a 16-year-old and with an added element of “I wish we could just fly away from all the people and horrible society who say we can’t be together.” Ack.
Makes me sad that Brittany Spears “I’m not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” doesn’t quite qualify for this round-up.
I also reckon Zappa’s Suzy Creamcheese ought to make an appearance.
Oh and can you pair these 50s/60s teen tragedy songs with 50s/60s teen urban legends, in an eldritch horror mashup?
“Tell Laura I love her… and the car crash was the result of someone hiding in the backseat.”
At Moody River, we find a “lonely, lonely face just lookin’ back at me…” and a hook still attached to his car door.
Etc.
Please PLEASE write this.
When the Pearl Jam version of “Last Kiss” came out, I was so annoyed. I already knew and hated the original, having grown up listening to the Oldies station. The remake is even more emo, and everyone acted like it was some great new song, when in fact it was older than they were.
I remember when it came out, my dad heard it on the radio while we were in the car and was, like, “Oh man, this song was so awful when it came out, and now I have to listen to it AGAIN?” I thought it was pretty funny.
Definitely going to pace impatiently in front of the Toast until that post comes out. Like a kid waiting for a new Nintendo or something.
I made an entire playlist of dead teenager songs from (mostly) that era on Spotify which I then named Dead Teenager Songs.
My personal favorites are “The Water Was Red” where a SHARK kills his girlfriend, and “Hello, This is Joanie”, ie the second worst song of all time. A song that will make no sense soon as it involves an answering machine message (AND a car crash, don’t worry, someone still dies).
i will posit Franz Ferdinand and All For You Sophia, but she really only gets the one (repeated) mention in the song, despite the incident being 1) the source of the band’s name and more relevantly 2) the spark that started WWI.
The assassination of the Duchess of Hohenberg sparked WWI? Misandrist history, I say!
MISANDRIST HERSTORY, PLEASE
Sometimes I forget that I am a 65-year-old hermit trapped in a 29-year-old body and then something like this comes along to remind me that the only Dead Girl songs I can come up with on my own are “Last Kiss” and Tim oh god haha what McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl.”
My iPod is only for podcasts and sometimes Spotify plays Toto at me, why am I even here
The only Decemberists song I am familiar with is “Eli the Barrow Boy,” which is of course also about a dead girl. Do the Decemberists know any live girls??
I was surprised she didn’t go with Leslie Anne Levine, since everyone in the song is already super dead from the very beginning.
Yes, Leslie Anne Levine is about 2 dead girls who have been dead for forever. Also, possibly dead girl baby?
Very very dead.
And a dead chimney sweep, trapped and forgotten in a fireplace flue. Very high body count in that song.
No.
They used to know some live girls, but then they all died. 🙁
So it’s way the wrong genre but the dead girl song that immediately sprang to mind was Loreena McKennitt’s “The Highwayman.” Which, hello 1990s mental catalog, I wasn’t expecting you.
The one that sprang to my mind was “Carrying Cathy,” but didn’t we already talk about her in the “Saddest Girl” post?
Yes we did! I guess Cathy carries over since she jumps out the window halfway through the song and is therefore sad AND dead.
Oh man, Loreena has WAAAYYY more dead, historic girls than most of these indie artists put together. The Highwayman, The Bonny Swans, The English Ladye and the Knight, ad nauseum. And yes, there’s an accurate glimpse into my 90s mental catalog too.
I can’t believe I forgot Neko Case’s Make Your Bed when you asked yesterday. She’s got a lot of dead girls too, come to think of it. But I think she’s got just as many dead guys.
She also has MY HEART.
Oh, I imagine Neko has whole rooms full of hearts.
She’s running out of storage space for human hearts, at least the ones nailed to the walls of her barn make for some great sounding natural reverb when recording.
Just in “This Tornado Loves You,” she’s got, like whole dead Midwestern counties.
As soon as I saw the title of this post, I knew the answer had to be Anne Frank.
But also related, I made a mix sometime ago that was Songs About Death, which has a fair amount of dead girls on it, both indie and otherwise, but also some dead men or non-gendered individuals!
My other nominees are the unnamed person in the Weakerthans’ “Night Windows,” Laura in Ryan Adams’s “September,” and E’s mom in the Eels’ “Going to Your Funeral Pt. 1.”
Oh man, the entire Electro-Shock Blues album is just TEEMING with death.
Did you just refer to Nickel Creek as “indie rock”?
I DID
wanna fight about it???
not really, just wondering what the rock element is of a progressive bluegrass band. Oh well, doesn’t matter.
“rock” just means music, probably
mallory i think you’re awesome, but i want to fight with you about something different (but related) – “CURRENT crop of indie rocker neo-stompist lumber-throwback-jacks”? i think the most recent song on this list is fleet foxes and that’s from 2008….
Yeah, most of these are for bands that have been around and producing records for AT LEAST ten years if not 20. Or 30 (Nick Cave). Which means it’s totally my demographic and not Kids These Days.
I’d like to offer The Lemonheads’ version of Knoxville Girl, even though they had crossed over into alternative rock by that time.
Nirvana’s In The Pines cover also came to mind but it turns out that the girl is not dead but rather a murderer.
I named my ovarian cysts Leslie Anne Levine and Valencia. That’s all I got.
What about “Westfall” by Okkervil River? She’s not dead for a long time, but he does kill her and it was easy, so there’s that. I mean it’s obviously not going to beat Anne Frank.
I think Westfall is less about glorifying female death and more about fascination with murderers, which makes it a bit less of a Dead Girl song
As long as we are parsing OR lyrics… does little Michael die in that child safety seat (lying with the windows rolled up in the August heat)?
I feel like there should be an Iron and Wine song on this list but I can’t think of one right now. But aren’t Sam Beam songs second on the list after Decemberists songs for “least likely to make it out alive..”? That being said the overall winner is the first one I thought of when I saw the title of this article, her or the girl from “Ghost”, also by NMH.
Well, there is of course Jezebel. The OLDEST of dead women. Heck, she’s freakin’ biblical.
In the Bonny Swans the sister kills her for love of a man, so there is a separate subcategory for Murdered Girls. See also Delia’s Gone, and Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town
Murder ballads are littered with dead ladies who took the wrong walk with the wrong guy named Willie. Although Bonny Swans I think wins out for its particularly gruesome how-to on making musical instruments…
Does Ruby die? I’m familiar with the Kenny Rogers version where he thinks about shooting her (sometimes I think I’ll get my gun and put her in the ground) and if I recall the last line is “Oh Ruby… for God sakes turn around.”
Do we assume he shot her?
Nitpicky – in O Valencia! I think she’s running to him to save him? Not running away, but I could be wrong about that.
It doesn’t make her any less dead, though.
I respectfully submit Stars “I Died So I Could Haunt You,” not because I think that girl is the deadest girl, but just because I am obsessed with that song and hope people will talk about it now in this thread.
Make no mistake, that girl is pretty dead. However, it sounds like she was kind of a BAMF in her living times, with probably disqualifies her: “I was a girl when I wore widow’s clothes/I was unfaithful, I lived as I chose/I want only to haunt you…”
Nicole, were you the one who thought that one song a few posts back in this series was about Anne Frank when it was actually about meth or something? Because this one is actually about Anne Frank. Also all the ladies involved are probably dead, so.
Yes. That was me.
I’m glad Mallory located an Anne Frank song for you. <3
It really helps to pretend he's a Muppet. Indie dude with a terrible voice singing ridiculous songs about historical people dying tragically? Insufferable. Big Bird singing ridiculous songs about historical people dying tragically? A DELIGHT.
I think the dream girl from Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘My Dream Girl Don’t Exist’ is actually deader than any of the others, by virtue of being imaginary even within the context of the song AND having slit her wrists at the age of five.
Also, lots of people think that Valencia is a dude, so.
Barbara Allen should make this list, since she was recently covered by the lovely Frank Turner, despite being an ancient English folk song.
“Oh father, father, dig my grave
And dig it deep and narrow
A young man died for me today
I shall die for him tomorrow
So they both were buried in the old churchyard
But she was buried higher
And from her grave a red rose grew
And from his grave a brier”
SHE DIES OF HEARTBREAK BECAUSE THE GUY SHE REJECTED DIED OF HEARTBREAK AND THEN THEY’RE BURIED NEXT TO EACH OTHER.
I’m not sure if Tom Waits is indie rock, and it may be based on a true story, but “Georgia Lee” is a great dead girl song.
Ben Folds, “Carrying Cathy.” The title alone goddamn beats you over the head with how dead this girl will be by the end of the song.
Anne Frank might be the most dead, but she’s not really a girl. Not any more. Now she’s a symbol or a metaphor or something; not an actual person. Certainly not a regular teenage girl who wrote about her vagina in her private diary.