Today I was listening to old people music on the TV because that’s what old people do. You’d think I’d listen to the '80s old people TV station since that should be my music sweet spot, but no. I can be found almost always lost in the '70s. The criminally underrated actress and comedian Vicki Lawrence’s hit came on and I actually listened to the words of The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia.
First thing, he’s been gone a long time and instead of going home to be with his wife, he stops at a bar to get drunk. Shows you what kind of husband he was. Second thing, what was up with his friend? Sure, if your friend’s wife is cheating on him, you’d tell him. But would you tell your friend basically, 'Your wife’s a hoe. We’ve all been fucking her while you were gone. 'night Bud!"
Mostly though, who in the hell killed the best friend? The accused sister? Why? Did they hang the other guy the same night? Doesn’t seem so since there was a trial. Why the hell did the lights go out? I was not quite 8 when the song came out and I imagined them charging up the electric chair caused the lights to flicker and turn out but it says right in the chorus that he was hung.
“The story wraps up as the narrator identifies herself as Brother’s “Little Sister” and reveals that it was her footprints that Brother saw on his way to Andy’s house. Little Sister then admits that she had not only killed Andy with her own gun, but Brother’s adulterous wife as well, disposing of the latter’s body where she is certain nobody will ever find it.”
My assumption is the sister killed the wife for cheating on her brother and killed Andy for betraying his friend by sleeping with his friend’s wife.
I don’t understand the title of the song. Maybe here “lights went out” is a euphemism for death. As in, the night a lot of people died. Except that the brother didn’t die that night, but later.
See, I knew Wildfire is brought up a lot but did not think this song would. Maybe it’s it’s own genre, old-kinda-country-pop-that-makes-little-to-no-sense.
It reads like a paean to the old South, though I have read Robertson says it was not. Yea, right. The rebel flag waves through that song more than at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.
Joan Baez didn’t help matters by singing it without a gender shift.
Years went by before I ever saw the lyrics to the song, no way I could pick them up by ear. There was a lot more there than I expected, just seemed like another one of those southern-sheriff-shot-some-poor-slob songs. IMHO the ‘lights went out’ part is about all of the death and emotional destruction involved in the story culminating in the hanging. It’s like the lights going out on their life up that point, the life none of them can ever return to. But I didn’t read the linked article yet, have to see what better informed people say about this.
I do recall seeing Vicki on her talk show when she said she was going to “sing a medley of her hit.” She thought it was a good song even though her husband didn’t agree and recorded it herself, yet still admitted she had no idea how big a hit it would be. I can’t believe other singers turned it down initially, it’s as iconic to the southern decadence murder genre as Ode to Billy Joe is to the southern decadence suicide genre.
“Southern Gothic”. It’s more about mood than sense. “Ode to Billie Joe” is another well-known example. At least that one is understandable, even if we never learn why Billie Joe jumped off the …well you know.
I agree. She was fantastic on the Carol Burnett show and both under and over utilized there. She had so much more talent than just playing silly characters like Mama, but she was still fantastic at it, virtually carrying the show at times.
Oh, now I have a genre for every Helen Reddy hit ever. Maybe I’ll do a deep listen to Delta Dawn and Angie Baby to see if they make as little sense as The Night That Blah Blah. . … Or maybe I won’t. At least I’ll wait until later this week after a few beers, which would make it a lot more fun.
Did she really have magical powers and shrink that neighbor boy and hide him in the radio, or did she just murder him and keep his dead body in her room? I like it either way.
I always listened to this song with a mixture of pleasure, confusion and dread. I could get the basic gist but without the ability to see the actual lyrics the story got kind of muddled. My young self couldn’t differentiate between “Andy” and “and he”.
If you’d ask me forty years ago what the title of the song meant, I’m not sure I could have articulated it though I had a vague understanding that it was a euphemism for “a tragedy happened that night”.I did not like the part where he finds the victim in a puddle of blood. Even though I was a horror junky already at that young age, it just seemed creepy.
