Positive Songs For Negative Times #81: Your Final Mile

Two of my favourite albums this year feature songs about the suicide of a close friend. Maybe I'm just a misery-guts. I do understand suicidal thoughts though. Like many people, I have been haunted by them at various times throughout my life. But I couldn’t ever act upon them because I know the impact it would have on my loved ones. And not just those in my immediate circle.

A year or so back, I received news than an old girlfriend had taken her own life. I hadn’t seen her in 20 odd years, but I still wondered if there was something I could have done. I don’t know if that’s egotistical. It wasn’t as though I was part of her life anymore: we’d parted on good terms (but it was her decision) and she’d gone on to marry and have children. The crazy thing is, on the outside at least, she was the happiest person I ever knew. And I know that doesn’t mean anything. But I’ll always wonder why and what if? 

Waking Up The Echoes comes from the powerful new album by American Aquarium, Chicamacomico. Lead singer BJ Barham wrote the track about the death of a close friend, although he struggled to do so for many years. “It’s about looking back on a troubled person and choosing to focus on the good times instead of the dark times.”

I wish you’d have called me

Maybe I could have talked you down

But the thing that I wish most of all

Is that you were still around

Frank Turner’s latest album, FTHC, is one of the best of his career. One of many highlights is A Wave Across A Bay, a tribute to Frank’s friend Scott Hutchinson, lead singer of the band Frightened Rabbit, who died in 2018.

Goddam, I miss you man

It was just weeks before you left that we were speaking

I just wish that you had told me you were leaving

Before you walked your final mile

I’m not pissed off at you, man

You had something in your soul that we could recognise

You were one of us, but you’d worked out how you could survive

At least for a while