That'll be the day, by Buddy Holly: what does it mean?

Cafe Society
1

Continuing the discussion from What is the most commonly used phrase in English that came from a movie?:

My wife and I realized last night that we interpret the Buddy Holly song in very different ways.

I hear “That’ll be the day when I die” as him saying, “If you leave me, I’ll be so sad I’ll die.”

She hears that same line as, “You’re never gonna leave me, you’ll only leave me when I die.”

In other words: I hear sappy, she hears sneering.

I can now see both interpretations, but can’t figure out which one Holly intended. How do y’all interpret the song?

2

I’ve always interpreted it as “never gonna happen.” You say you’re gonna leave me, but you know it’s a lie. You never actually will do it.

3

He’s singing about how she’s saying that they’ll break up one day

He’s saying that, they’re not going to break up, because he’d die without her.

So, OP, I agree with you: he’d be so sad he’d die.

4

I’m with @Shoeless. In every stanza the singer tells the sing-ee it’s a lie. And Buddy Holly/Linda Rondstadt explicitly add "When Cupid shot his bow/ He shot it at your heart So if we ever part Then I’ll leave you (Emphasis mine)

Now it may be the singer is in a state of denial and his love has already walked out, but that’s more subtext than we really expect from Buddy Holly.

5

One other thing to add: “That’ll be the day” in the Buddy Holly song is a reference to a phrase John Wayne uses in “The Searchers”. And IIRC John Wayne’s usage of “That’ll be the day” was the same: that will never happen. Or as the kids today would say, “As if!”

6

Yeah–I totally get that, and the Cupid line is also good evidence for “ain’t gonna happen.” But then he goes into “that’ll be the day when I die,” which doesn’t sound like “…of natural causes” to me.

Honestly I find it very confusing. Mixed messages, Buddy!

7

I think he means “You won’t leave me until I’m dead.” And it’s funny, I always heard it as “That’ll be the day that I die”, not “when I die”, but it looks like I’ve been wrong about that. But I think the interpretation fits either way.

8

I’ll die because you say goodbye?
You’ll say goodbye because I die?

Cause and effect, dude, cause and effect! This correlation nonsense is very confusing!

9

Put me in the “neither” camp. It’s like saying “that’ll be the day when I eat crow pie” or “that’ll be the day when pigs fly.”

10

“That’ll be the day when I die” can be interpreted both ways, but it seems to me that “you say you’re gonna leave, you know it’s a lie” has only one interpretation. Therefore I vote for “never going to happen.”

11

If anything Buddy is gloating about the fact that he has an almost abusive hold over his partner. She says she’s going to leave but “that’ll be the day.” He takes all her love and her money. She’s so much under his spell that only he could ever leave her. What a creep.

12

I don’t think there’s a lot of point in overthinking it?

He wrote it in a era when Tin Pan Alley used rhymes like ‘moon’ and ‘june’… perhaps he just wanted to knock out a quick lyric for a song he had ready to record?

Of course we wish we could ask him…

13

Could he have intended both interpretations?

‘If you leave me, I’ll be so sad I’ll die; you don’t want that to happen, so you’re never gonna leave me.’

14

Still, it doesn’t take much imagination to interpret it as “over my dead body”. Which hits very different than “I’ll die if you leave.”

15

“That’ll be the day when pigs fly” scans perfectly and you’ve just stuck a new earworm in my brain.

Thanks a bunch.

16

Buddy’s girlfriend is giving him crap about breaking up with him, so he responds by saying that if anyone leaves, it’ll be him, and he’ll die before shedding a tear over her.

Not a healthy-sounding relationship but not creepy. And not remotely as objectionable as Mick Jagger’s sneering in “Under My Thumb” or Pete Townshend’s “sorry, baby” in “A Legal Matter”.

17

I don’t see the problem with Buddy Holly’s song.

The Beatles - a well known cover band till about 1964 - had “Run for your life” but John took that one back. Jagger is always going to have “Under My Thumb” if only because that song rocks.

18

Maybe, if it wasn’t for:

“All your hugs and kisses
And your money too”

19

The same phrase can mean different things depending on context and emphasis. in this case:

  1. Never gonna happen. You say it but you’d never go through with it.
  2. Your leaving would kill me. which could be different flavors of romantic/pathetic/manipulative.
  3. I’ll be dead before I let that happen. Not romantic at all.
    Kinda like the difference between “nothing is better than…” and “NOTHING is better than…”
20

Put me in the “It’ll never happen, because you know I’ll die of heartbreak (or, less charitably , kill myself) if you left me” camp.