I'll Be a Friend, I'll Tell You What's in Store

The rain today makes it easy to think of this one, especially since it popped up on a 15-year-old mixed tape the other day, especially since it keeps the week's theme of dourness, the Democrats, disconsolateness, drinking, and dysphoria running (damn the D's, full blog ahead). And while Cole makes a joke of it in his story, what does it mean to drag in a chorus of children to sing the la-la-la-la's on a song baldly billed "Unhappy Song," it's like singing Richard Thompson's "End of the Rainbow" to them, or worse, making them sing it themselves. But that's not quite right, is it--they get the leavening la-la-la's, the bit that's meant to be sweet. Cause there's always sweet in the unhappy, isn't there, otherwise we'd never know it for the dolefulness it is. We sing, of all things, our sorrow. How human of us.