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Patsy Cline’s Greatest Hits, Patsy Cline
Decca, March 13, 1967
Track Listing: 1. Walkin’ After Midnight, 2. Sweet Dreams (of You), 3. Crazy, 4. I Fall to Pieces, 5. So Wrong, 6. Strange, 7. Back in Baby’s Arms, 8. She’s Got Yo, 9. Faded Love, 10. Why Can’t He Be You, 11. You’re Stronger Than Me, 12. Leavin’ on Your Mind
It just ain’t right, all this loneliness and heartbreak, all this pain and sorrow. Strange how laments of lost love can pair with pastoral melodies to make misery seem so agreeable, like the sweetest caress. Patsy Cline plays magician diverting us with her beguiling voice in order to turn torment into enchantment right before our very ears. We are bamboozled, lured back to minefields of epic heartache.
“I’m always walking, after midnight
Searching for you”
-from “Walkin’ After Midnight”
Like memories that refuse to be forgotten, piano keys trail off ever so slowly, gently, deliberate in their regal defiance of being silenced.
“Why can’t I forget you and start my life anew
Instead of having sweet dreams about you?”
-from “Sweet Dreams (of You)”
After all that has been said and done, it remains a mystery how the past continues to bewitch, but there’s no use trying to comprehend the absurdity of the human heart. Explanations outdistance logic faster than sunsets slipping horizons.
“I’m crazy for trying and crazy for crying
And I’m crazy for loving you”
-from “Crazy”
An unexpected assault on predictability surfaces in the chance meeting of someone new. Hungry eyes lock onto targets. Smooth and impossibly soft skin touches skin, sealing an unforgettable embrace. Body to body, the jolt of electrocution leaves its mark.
“You want me to act like we’ve never kissed
You want me to forget, pretend we’ve never met
And I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I haven’t yet”
-from “I Fall to Pieces”
The heart wants what the heart wants.
“He loves me too, his love is true
Why can’t he be you?”
-from “Why Can’t He Be You”
Was it just a summer fling? A nudge from the cosmos to awaken a slumbering fool who somehow thought that the passing years (many years) were busy building barriers—protection from the high voltage electric waves of love. And yet here we are. The fantasy of a summer embrace remains, albeit dimming more and more each day in the stalking shadows of October’s cool and calculated approach.
“With every heartbeat, I still think of you
And remember our faded love”
-from “Faded Love”
It is well understood that with every beginning, there is an ending. But while some endings are written just as they were meant to be written, it goes without saying that others are horrific and tragic, never meant to be understood. Here, the scars of anguish will one day begin to be covered in a dull ache of regret before the time comes at long last when the surrender of acceptance reveals nothing else but the breathtaking snapshots beauty left behind.
“I’ve got the records that we used to share
And they still sound the same as when you were here”
-from “She’s Got You”
-G
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