Question:
In Pierce Pettis' song "Alabama 1959," he moves from a general theme of nostalgia to a more intense theme about the heavy racism of that time period. It's a strophic song, so every stanza has the same basic music and rhyme scheme. Here's one of the early "nostalgia" stanzas:
"Daddy had hair, mom was thin,
Why look at the silly clothes they wore back then,
Studebaker truck parked in the drive,
Alabama 1959."
Then, before going into the stanzas about racism, he has this stanza:
"The TVA strung power lines,
Lit up our world with Pepsodent and Lucky Strikes,
The TV's rolled in black and white,
Alabama 1959."
Then, he finally gets into the thick of things with stanzas like this:
"Football games beneath the lights,
No one ever dared to cross the color line,
Black faces watched through the fence outside,
Alabama 1959."
To me, the song is absolutely a work of genius as a whole, but what I'm concerned with here is the third line of that "in-between" stanza. I think "the TV's rolled in black and white" in the context of this song is easily one of the best lines of lyrics that I have ever heard or read. It's perfect. You don't even catch it until you listen to the song a second or a third time, but it foreshadows the topic he's about to switch to by introducing the contrast between black and white. He performs it perfectly, too; his voices changes ever so slightly on that line. It's downright beautiful, I think. What do you think? Are there other writers / songs that do this?
In His love,
Nate
Answer:
I'm not sure of any, but if I ever get the chance, I think I might do that as well. That truly is a thing of beauty. I'll have to rack my brain on this one. Yoiks, that's ingenius.