Isn’t It Ironic? No, Seriously…
Background: Irony — It’s not the adjective you use when your clothes are de-wrinkled, it’s not just coincidentally bad stuff that happens to you at inopportune moments, it’s the opposite of what you would expect to happen at certain moments in time during your life. When used properly, it can be either hilarious or incredibly thought-provoking. In this blog, we will look at two songs of each and how the use of irony can lend itself well to a song. The first three songs are protest songs and the irony that comes with war and politics, while the last one focuses on the irony of a journey of self-discovery.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Memphis Songwriters Association.
“Birmingham Sunday” by Joan Baez
Lyrically: In recent years, there has been a movement to “Say the names” of the people who have died from senseless violence. I have talked extensively (though maybe not in blog form) about how Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” is still so relevant 60 plus years after it was released, and with Joan Baez’s “Birmingham Sunday,” we get the beginnings of the “Say their name” movement. In three of the verses in this tune about the 1963 bombing at a Black church in Birmingham, the narrator talks about the four little girls who were killed, mentioning them by name: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, and Carol Robertson. In the first verse, before she even mentions anyone’s name, she says, “The blood ran like wine” (a sure allusion to the Last Supper) and each verse ends with “And the choir kept singing for freedom.” This is where the irony comes in. The 16th Street Baptist Church was a meeting spot for Civil Rights leaders and those who wanted to help with protests in the fight for freedom. As this bombing was going on, according to the song, the choir (representing innocence and also resistance) kept singing for freedom. In other words, as their freedom was being stripped, they kept singing for it. Those two images happening simultaneously provide a powerful amount of irony and makes the song what it is.
Melodically: The first verse of the song uses F#, C#, G#, F#, G# (with the F# and G# closing out each verse getting played twice). With the song in F# , this is a I, IV, I, bVII, I pattern. In the subsequent verses, the D#7 (which is the V7 chord, gets played before the final G#). Instrumentally, the song contains acoustic guitar, chimes, and vocals. It makes perfect sense for a song like this to be only accompanied by a minimal arrangement, such as guitar, but the chimes give a nice contrast to the haunting vocals, given that it’s about an event that happened at a church. And, given the title of the song, “Chimes of Freedom” pops into my head — so the placement of the chimes provides a level of instrumental irony.
Structurally: The song uses all verses, of which there are 8. The details about the girls who were killed are minimal, but that’s exactly the point. They were just innocent little girls, who didn’t ask for any of the violence inflicted upon them. Of course just talking about them would have been fine, but interspersed within the verses about them are details and other verses about the political climate at the time of the bombing. This includes one question, “How many blackberries grow in the blue sea?” somehow implying that blackberries are some sort of invasive species, and the blue sea (no doubt a representation of blue eyes) are what should be there. It’s a disturbing thought, but a very poetic one, and paired with the aforementioned names of the girls killed (humanizing them), it gives us a clear picture of what was going on. This sounds like more of a lyrical breakdown, but since this is somewhat of a hybrid song, telling a story, but giving examples of what was going on in the political and social climate, it’s important to note how the information is delivered all at once, in no particular order, to fully grasp how much information is needed to understand – and even with that, it’s impossible to understand the atrocity.
Closing interesting fact about this tune: This one was written by Richard Farina, who was an influential musician in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 60s. His life was tragically cut short by a motorcycle accident at the age of 29 in 1965.
“Birmingham Sunday” is embedded below.
2. “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen
Lyrically: The title track to The Boss’ 1984 smash hit album, “Born in the U.S.A.” is sung from the perspective from a narrator who talks about growing up in “A dead man’s town” with “the first kick (he) took was when he hit the ground.” With that hard luck, society left him for dead, and his only way out was to join the military: “Got in a little hometown jam, so they put a rifle in my hand. Sent me off to a foreign land to go and kill the yellow man.” After he got back from serving in Vietnam, no one around town would hire him, and the VA wouldn’t give him his benefits. In the end, though he survived and some of his fellow soldiers didn’t, he’s back stuck in the dead-end town at a dead-end himself. Here’s where the use of irony comes in: After each one of these verses, the chorus comes in, which is the battle cry, “Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.” This person became a social outcast after breaking the law, and as he was supposedly fighting for his country’s freedom, his own freedoms were being taken away, but he had been told that was all part of being a good patriot. The irony continues as the chorus of this song has been used by politicians of all kinds, thinking it’s a patriotic hymn, when in reality, it’s protesting against most of what they’re doing.
Melodically: Written in the key of B major, the song alternates between the B and the E chords (the I and the IV) throughout the whole song. Instrumentally, the song uses electric, acoustic, and bass guitar, as well as synthesizers, glockenspiel, piano, maracas, and drums, and repeats the same melodic idea throughout. When I think of the song, I immediately think of the booming synthesizers and snare drums that dominate the chorus’ rallying cry. One of my favorite things about Bruce is that he followed the bombastic Born in the U.S.A. album with the more stripped down Tunnel of Love, and did the same thing with The River and Nebraska. However, there would have simply been no way that the title track to “Born in the U.S.A.” could have worked as well as it did without the in-your-face arrangement that appears on the album (and of course, Springsteen knew that!).
Structurally: The song follows a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus format. To me, this is a hybrid song, half story song, half example song. As a result of that, you don’t need long, drawn-out verses, instead just quick examples of what the narrator and his army buddies went through. In one of my first blogs, I talked about the booming, drawn out chorus of The Bee Gees’ “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and it’s one of the most poetic, powerful choruses out there. That’s not what this song needs — the chorus is short, but biting, and still gets the point across just as well. Everything about this song is supposed to hit you quick and then leave, even though the memories haven’t left the narrator.
You can listen to “Born in the U.S.A.” below.
3. “Alice’s Restaurant” by Arlo Guthrie
Background: I mentioned this song while talking about “Give it Away” by George Strait, because he uses a vocal delivery that borders on talking, like Arlo does in this song. I can’t quite remember how old I was the first time I heard “Alice’s Restaurant,” but like many of my earliest musical memories, I remember hearing it in my dad’s car. For the past 6 years, I have enjoyed telling my students about “The greatest Thanksgiving song ever written” and then playing it for them on guitar. It’s the cleanest version I can do, but hey, it’s also educational! (On a sentimental note, one of my students made me a mix of my favorite songs and the cover was a picture of me superimposed onto the cover of the Alice’s Restaurant album cover.)
Lyrically: It may not seem like it, since the song is over 18 minutes long (taking up the entire first side of its parent album of the same name), but “Alice’s Restaurant” is told in three parts. The first part tells the tale of the time Arlo and his friend went up to visit their friend Alice and her husband Ray up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. Alice owned a restaurant, but the restaurant wasn’t called Alice’s Restaurant, that’s just the name of the song, and that’s why the song is called “Alice’s Restaurant.” Anyway, after they all have “A Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat,” Arlo and his friend thought it’d be a nice gesture to take the garbage to the dump. There was a lot of it, as Alice and Ray had used the old church where they lived to store all the garbage, so they put all the garbage in their red VW Microbus (with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction) and brought it to the dump. The dump was closed, “It bein’ Thanksgivin’ and all” but they decided to dump the garbage in there anyway. The next morning, they ended up getting arrested for littering and had to stand trial, where the town of Stockbridge showed the jury “27 8”x10” glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us,” and they had to pay $50 and pick up litter on the side of the road.
So where does the irony come in? Well, the second part to the song sees Arlo going to New York to be screened for the draft during the Vietnam War. At some point in the screening process, they determine that Arlo has been arrested (after he tells them about the “27 8”x10” glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us,”) and is determined to be unfit to serve, because he’s a litterbug. Of course, morally there were way worse things going on in Vietnam, and way worse things that all the people on the Group W bench (“Where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committin’ your special type of crime”) were doing (“Mother rapin’ and father stabbin’,”), but they took exception to his littering. Because he recognized the irony and called it out, his fingerprints, as he claimed at the end of the song, were somewhere in Washington, and he finally reveals that the only reason he’s singing the song is because someone listening might be in a situation where they need to get out of military service, and in order to do so, they just need to go into the shrink’s office and sing a bar of “Alice’s Restaurant.” In one of my favorite lines that I quote often, he says if two people do it, it won’t work, but if 50 people do it, “That’s a movement!” It’s an incredibly goofy song, but like I tell my students, it’s very culturally important, redefining the protest song.
Melodically: Arlo has said that since the lyrics were so complex, the only way for the tune to work was to put it to the simplest guitar part he could think of. So the piedmont blues picking pattern (emulative of minstrel shows as well), is repeated throughout the whole song. The song is written in the key of E major, and uses E, C#7, F#7, B7, and E, which is a I, VI7, II7, V7, I pattern. Of course with the repetitive nature of the melody, it makes sense that it would begin and end on the I. Instrumentally, it only contains a guitar, with a capo on the 2nd fret.
Structurally: “Alice’s Restaurant” starts off with an introductory verse, followed by the chorus. This chorus is only sung three places throughout the song: once after the verse and twice at the end. The rest are just verses, or you could think of the rest as just one big long verse. The lack of a regular chorus is an excellent choice, and adds to the humor of the song. At one point, after a long bit of rambling, he mentions Alice, and says, “You remember, Alice? There’s a song about Alice!” and that wouldn’t be nearly as funny if Alice were brought up more often in the song. It works great, and easily could have gone in our Unorthodox Song Structures blog, because there is simply nothing like this one, lyrically or structurally.
Fun Fact (Allegedly): It’s a running joke in the Guthrie family that this was the last thing Woody heard before he died. What a fabulous way to spend the last 18:34 minutes of your life!
You can listen to “Alice’s Restaurant” below, and when the guitar comes back in, I want everyone singing along, with feeling.
4. “Gettin’ Ready to Get Down” by Josh Ritter
Lyrically: The first time I heard “Sweetest Goodbye” by Maroon 5, it blew me away how they could fit the phrase, “The rhythm of the rain that drops and coincides with the beating of my heart” into the rhythm of the song. I feel that way about pretty much every Josh Ritter song, and “Gettin’ Ready to Get Down” is one of them. The song opens with the line, “Mama got a look at you and got a little worried, papa got a look at you and got a little worried, preacher said, ‘Look, now y’all’d better hurry, sent her off to a little Bible college in Missouri.’” He then proceeds to tell the tale of the girl who was sent off to that Bible school and how it only made her rebel more. The irony is on full display when he says, “Eve ate the apple ‘cause she thought it was sweet, what kind of god would ever keep a girl from gettin’ what she needs?” and she continues her questioning of what she’s been taught to believe, including learning “There’s more than what (she) was taught was in the Golden Rule” so when she’s “Back off the bus in (her) old home town,” she says, “If you didn’t like me then, you probably won’t like me now.” This is contrasted by some of the teachings in the middle 8, which includes some of my favorite lines: “Now the men of the country club, the ladies of the ‘xillary, talkin’ ‘bout love like it’s apple pie and liberty, to really be a saint, you gotta really be a virgin, clean as a page from the King James version. No ‘ooh la la’s’ no ‘oh hell yes’s’, ‘I can’t waits’, ‘gotta see you againses’, turn the other cheek, don’t take no chances, Jesus hates your high school dances.” (I have a bumper sticker with the last line on it, but as you can tell, I should probably just have the whole song because I love all the lyrics!)
Melodically: The song is written in the key of F major. Relative to the capo, which is placed on the 5th fret, the verses use C/G, F, C/G, and G, played through twice. The chorus uses the same chords, except it only gets played through once. This is a I, IV, I, V pattern. The middle 8 uses Am, F, C/G, G, Am, F, C/G, and G. This is a vi, IV, I, V, vi, IV, I, V pattern. The break between the solo and the third verse uses the same chords as the verse, and that, like the verse, gets played twice. Instrumentally, the song contains guitar, bass (which is especially prevalent in the middle 8), and drums.
Structurally: The song uses a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle 8, solo, verse, chorus structure. As I mentioned in the first section, the verses are lyrically complex, so it would’ve been too much if the chorus had done the same. This also works because there’s all this pent up frustration within the main character, and although on the surface her threat of “Gettin’ ready to get down” is just that, that’s actually what she’s been doing this whole time — her people just aren’t ready for that conversation, as the kids say. The last verse is a rehashing of the first, which is fine because the narrator has already said so much. The only new information presented in the last verse is that instead of “Infidels, Jezebels, Saloloms and Delilahs”, it’s “The Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the Sermon on the Mount,” before closing with one of my absolute favorite lines to use, “If you wanna see a miracle, watch me get down.” It’s such a fun song, but also a very relatable one. I even had a former student who went to a Bible College in Missouri and when she told me she was going there, I said, “I’ve got the perfect song for you!” You can listen below!
