We found the mighty Bismarck, and then we cut her down. Happy ending, unless you were a sailor on the Bismarck, I suppose.
Speaking of taut wartime adventure narratives, there’s also Snoopy’s Christmas, which ends with Snoopy and the Red Baron sharing a holiday toast, and Snoopy (our hero) saluting his host. The ending is ambivalent, though, because each knows they’ll meet on some other day. Curse this war!
Steve Miller’s “Take The Money And Run” ends happily as long as you accept that you’re expected to root for the people who killed a homeowner during a botched burglary and got away with it.
Chuck Berry’s “Little Marie” (sequel to Memphis, Tennesee) ends with:
Then she spoke and asked me to come back and see Marie
And live together in our home in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Devil bowed his head because he knew that he’d been beat.
And he laid that golden fiddle on the ground at Johnny’s feet.
Johnny said, “Devil, just come on back if you ever wanna try again,
I done told you once—you son of a bitch—I’m the best that’s ever been.”
“Stranded In The Jungle”. He makes it back to his baby.
Or how about “Along Came Jones”? Jones always saves the day. Slow-walkin’ Jones, slow-talkin’ Jones…
A Quick One While He’s Away ends with the girl guide being forgiven for taking a nap with Ivor the engine driver…that’s a happy ending of sorts, I suppose.
Well, not ultimately. She ends up with a boring, meaningless life after her man from the motor trade didn’t work out (Another Day - Wings) and dies alone and unremembered (Eleanor Rigby).
I’ve always viewed those as about the same person at different points in her life.
Ah, look at all the lonely people…
Oh, and Harry Chapin’s Sequel seems to have at least the possibility of happy ending. Maybe Harry and Sue can make it work this time.
I guess only time will tell.
In Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler has a happy ending:
And faded off to sleep
And somewhere in the darkness
The gambler he broke even
And in his final words
I found an ace that I could keep
For certain values of happy.
How do you figure that? Not that it’s a happy song, except for he part where people explode into rock n’ roll bands.
Yeah, I reread the lyrics, and the narrative seems to switch between being about gangs, then street racers, then teenage love, then the music business, then the club scene, then murder (or is it suicide?).
I guess it’s just poetry, weaving a tapestry to life in the big city - it all exists together.
Or drugs. It’s always about the drugs.
Hell, by that standard, Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” has a happy ending. Rosemary "was lookin’ to do just one good deed before she died,’ and in putting the penknife into Big Jim’s back, she apparently felt she had accomplished that: “Rosemary on the gallows, she didn’t even blink.”
I’ve always been of two minds about the verse that’s in the official lyrics, but not on the Blood on the Tracks recorded version, but if we include that verse, Big Jim was surely, for Lily, “the man she couldn’t stand who hounded her so much,” so she’s free of him at last.
And is it a happy ending for the Jack of Hearts? Hell if we know. We don’t even know whether he got killed by Big Jim and/or his bodyguards, or whether he got off with his co-conspirators waiting by the riverbed, or what.
Good Directions by Billy Currington. The girl came back to him!
Harry Chapin’s A Better Place To Be
And the little man
Looked at the empty glass in his hand
And he smiled a crooked grin
He said, “I guess I’m out of gin
And I know we both have been so lonely
And if you want me to come with you that’s all right with me
‘Cause I know I’m goin’ nowhere and anywhere’s a better place to be’”
Tom T. Hall Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine
As I left for my room I saw him pickin’ up my change.
That night I dreamed in peaceful sleep of shady summertime,
Of old dogs and children and watermelon wine.
Boston’s Rock and Roll Band just told a vague story of them making it big and people enjoying their music, didn’t it?
Tie a Yellow Ribbon, Two Doors Down, Grady County Auction, Wild Wood Weed…
Damn it, you beat me to it. This is the correct answer. Although you’re right, we don’t actually hear the end of the story, but I’ve always assumed everything turns out OK because of the line “like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again”.
Blitzen Trapper’s Furr, I guess you could call a story song and that seems to have a happy ending … boy meets wolves, wolf meets girl, everyone lives happily ever after.
From the folk domain:
Dave Carter’s “Little Liza Jane” is a tall tale that ends well. Trucker drives off the side of the road on a snowy night, plunges for hundreds of feet and lands “just right”.
Gordon Bok’s “Peter Kagen and the Wind” has a happy ending, thanks to the seal/wife.
Tam Lin (traditional) ends with the girl winning her lover back from the Queen of fairies (who isn’t too damned pleased about that).
Harry Chapin’s I Wanna Learn a Love Song:
*Guess, you know what happened
My God, I never been so clean
Yeah, I feel like I’m workin’ in a Hollywood movie
Or livin’ out a good bad dream
And all them pin-up girls in that tinsel world
Never touched me, like she can
It took another man’s wife in the real world life
To make this boy, a man*