Seriously, think about it - I can’t think of a single one from any era where the protagonists walked off into the sunset, happily ever after. Everyone dies miserably in story song –
Leader of the Pack (Shangri-Las) - Bad boy boyfriend gets killed in a reckless driving accident.
Ode to Billy Joe (Bobbie Gentry) - Family callously makes small talk about Billy Joe’s suicide in front of the narrator (Billy Joe’s sweetheart) over lunch, biscuits get passed around, slices of apple pie get eaten. As karmic retribution for their apathy, the whole family falls apart in the space of a year.
The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (Vicki Lawrence) - innocent man gets set up by his floozy wife for the murder of her paramour; man gets hanged
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald IGordon Lightfoot) - Ship sinks, everybody drowns.
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (Billy Joel) - Brenda & Eddie get divorced, realize they can’t go home again and resort to nostalgically recalling their happier times before they got married while drowning their sorrows in red wine.
Jungleland (Bruce Springsteen) - Wayward girl falls through the cracks, dies anonymously in a seedy flophouse room.
Fast Car (Tracy Chapman) - Narrator realizes her lover is a deadbeat, and that her dreams of the two of them ever experiencing any social mobility will never happen, she kicks him to the curb and resigns herself to a life in the projects.
The nearest thing to a “happy ending” I can think of in a story song is Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby” in which at least the villain gets his just deserts. But frankly that song is just so bizarre it seems more like some songwriters’ bad acid flashback. lyrics here.
Just when it seemed all was lost and our protagonists were outmanned, outgunned and on the brink of defeat “came the deafening roar of chickens in choppers”.
A Boy Named Sue–Sue’s Dad abandons the family, Sue grows up to be a tough guy and goes looking for Dad (a.k.a. The Son of a [long bleeping sound] Who Named Me Sue), Sue finds Dad and prepares to kill him, Dad explains his reason for the name (something along the lines of since he was going to abandon the family and wouldn’t be there to see his son through his childhood he gave him a name that would get him teased and toughen him up, which to be frank never seemed like a really good reason to me), and Dad and Sue part ways as friends, although Sue still hates that name.
And speaking of Johnny Cash (although he didn’t actually write A Boy Named Sue), I believe the auto factory worker in One Piece At A Time who smuggled out Cadillac parts in his lunch box did eventually manage to build himself a car.
Running Scared–Maybe not so much a story song, but the ending is unexpected given Roy Orbison’s mournful delivery. Guy falls in love with a woman who had been in love with another man, and is terrified he will lose her to him again. Finally they encounter her former love, who seems very confident he can get her back, and in the last line of the song she turns away and leaves with the narrator.
Finally, I think we can all conclude Honey was much better off dead than married to Bobby Goldsboro.
I always thought that Tom Jones’ — whom I would no more listen to than Elvis usually — Delilah was very funny. Exemplifies the effects of an incontinent lack of self-control…
Anyway, at the end the cops are coming, which is a happy ending for those of us who don’t want psychopaths as neighbours.
First one I thought of, too, but it was already mentioned above.
In PT-109 by Jimmy Dean, the hero aquits himself nobly (and grows up to be President, although I guess you could say his term didn’t have a happy ending).
The Night Chicago Died, daddy came home safe.
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, he apparently gets away. It made Rose and Valerie happy, anyway.
Taylor Swift’s Romeo and Juliethas an ending that actually chokes me up every time I hear it. I don’t know why, it’s kind of sappy really. Maybe I’m just jealous because I never had a romantic love story of my own.
In Kenny Rogers’ “Coward of the County,” the titular coward shows himself not to be so, by beating the everliving shit out of the guys who [it is implied] raped his wife.
I wouldn’t say any rape song has a “happy” ending, but that was at least a satisfying one.
I can think of three Dylan story songs with reasonably positive endings.
“Went To See the Gypsy”
I went back to see the gypsy
It was nearly early dawn
The gypsy’s door was open wide
But the gypsy was gone
And that pretty dancing girl
She could not be found
So I watched that sun come rising
From that little Minnesota town
The sense of the ending, at least IMHO, is that though the gypsy’s gone, he’s perfectly OK with that; he doesn’t really need whatever wisdom the gypsy had to offer him.
“Day of the Locusts”
I put down my robe, picked up my diploma
Took hold of my sweetheart and away we did drive
Straight for the hills, the black hills of Dakota
Sure was glad to get out of there alive
He and his girl successfully escape from one very weird graduation ceremony.
“Isis”
She said, “Where ya been?”
I said, “No place special”
She said, “You look different.”
I said, “Well, I guess”
She said, “You been gone.”
I said, “That’s only natural”
She said, “You gonna stay?”
“If you want me to, yes.”
(Lyrics from “Isis” are as sung on the Desire album, and not those on the bobdylan.com website.)
