Today’s comparison of two songs with a similar theme takes us back to the classic country music days and the popular country music subgenre: The drinking song.
Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad by Tammy Wynette
and
I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home by David Frizzell
These songs tell the stories from the woman’s perspective on living with the barhopping, hard-drinking, money-squandering habits of her husband up to the point she’s had all she can stand, and she takes the situation into her own hands to change it.
In Tammy’s song, she takes the if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em strategy. She’s tired of staying home and waiting for her husband to show up whenever it darn well pleases him, despite his responsibilities to his wife and family. If living the bar life is such a great thing, then she’s going to join him. She’s going to become the very essence of what draws him to the bar life.
In David’s song, the wife takes the approach of turning her husband’s bar excursions into an entrepreneurial endeavor to collect and save the money he throws away on his good times instead of bringing his paycheck home for the good of the family. There is a tongue-in-cheek truth to this song and a great deal of satisfaction for those who have encountered this sort of situation in their [former] marriages. (I’m looking at me.)
Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad by Tammy Wynette is the title of a single and an album released in April of 1967. The album reached No. 7 on Billboards’ Country Albums chart. The single was released earlier in February of 1967 and it reached No. 3, which was Tammy’s first top ten single.
I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home by David Frizzell was released in April 1982. It was his first single release from his album The Family’s Fine, but This One’s All Mine. The song was his only No. 1 country chart hit as a solo artist.
Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
Lasterday Stories
writing through history one romance upon a time