I can’t recall how long it had been since I last heard the song, but I happened to stumble upon a video of Bobby Goldsboro singing “Honey”:
I understand that the song is "reviled" as being a really terrible song, but ... maybe it's just Robin Williams' death influencing my perception, but listening to the lyrics, I really had the strong impression that the "Honey" character committed suicide. The lyrics never state how she died, but the verses seem, to me, to describe somebody suffering from clinical depression. And maybe, in 1968, that just wasn't well-understood.
I disagree. She is not portrayed as as depressive, but as a sentimental simpleton, a (presumably) adult woman with emotions like a child. Much of what makes the song so cringe-inducing (and I am sure I was far from alone in finding it so, even at the time it was a hit) is that this is treated as a good, charming, loveable way for a grown woman to be. Anyway, childlike simpletons are not the sort to commit suicide.
The only plausible hint of depression is the line about once finding her “cryin’ needlessly/ In the middle of the day”, but I take the implication to be that she is crying because she has just learned that she has a terminal illness. She dies right after. The fact that she cries over the “late-late show” is merely an example of her sentimentality. Otherwise, the emotions ascribed to her seem to all be naïvely happy ones.
I am going to be stuck with this horrible song as an earworm, now.:mad:
If it’s any consolation for you, the Mexican singer Chelo (Consuelo “Chelo” Pérez Rubio) has a tuneful Spanish version with mariachi (better than her bolero version, imo). YouTube seems to have only a grade Z recording, here. Amazon for one has a better, if only 30-second, taste here.
No thank you! I don’t need it to be more “tuneful”. “Tuneful” is the problem. The tune is already plenty catchy enough to stick in my head. That can be annoying even when it happens with songs I love, but much more so when it happens with songs I hate, like this one. My hatred, however, is not (at least primarily) due to the tune, but to the cloyingly misogynistic lyrics associated with it.
The song was scorned even when it first came out as being syrupy and sentimental,* but a lot of people either liked that sort of sentimentality or just didn’t listen to the lyrics. The line “the angels came” clearly points to a natural death, not a suicide.
*Not to mention the time we wanted to blast out hard rock as we drove through town, and this was what came up on the radio.
I’ll buck the trend. Not only do I like the song, to a certain degree, but I think she committed suicide.
When the song was new, I thought she died from cancer or something, but as I get older I read it more that she was depressed for a long time and the singer never understood. It was the 60s - not only was knowledge of mental illness not where it is today, but there was a stigma to having it. Maybe if he wasn’t afraid to confront her illness, she could have got help.
He’s romanticizing the events after the fact. He’s an unreliable narrator. He thinks she was cute and naive, but that was just him not seeing that she had troubles. She wasn’t a simpleton - that’s how the singer saw her, not how she really was.
I have strong memories of my family driving from West Texas to my grandmother’s house in Arkansas at the height of this song’s popularity. This was about an eight-hour drive, and the song got lots of airtime on the radio. I hadn’t thought of Bobby Goldsboro in a long time, just looked him up and am sort of surprised he’s still alive.
There are many things that make this song utterly detestable, but near the top of the list for me is the fact that the singer is a complete dick.
His wife plants a tree and he laughs at her. Then later she “came runnin’ in all excited/slipped and almost hurt herself/and I laughed till I cried.” Really? What other misfortunes amused you? Her having an incurable disease? Maybe that’s why you couldn’t be bother to be with her the day “the angels came!” She died “One day while I was not at home/While she was there and all alone.” How charming! She died alone.
There he sits with a pen and a yellow pad.
What a handsome lad. That’s my boy.
“BRLFQ” spells “Mom and Dad.”
Well, that ain’t too bad. Cause that’s my boy.