Shot Through Your Cheatin’ Heart: “Open Pit Mine” and Country’s Cuckolded Killers
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“The Thunder Rolls”
Goddu’s essay discusses the reaction to Garth Brooks’s video for “The Thunder Rolls” (1991) as evidence of the country mainstream establishment pushing back against “the Gothic” and against stories showing women resorting to violence. The video is far clearer about domestic violence and killing than the song itself. The song is the first of our list involving a woman’s steps to kill her cheating husband.
“The Thunder Rolls” originally appeared without its third verse, where the wife, having smelled another woman’s perfume on her husband’s clothes, runs to retrieve a gun from her drawer, and reassures herself that this is the last night she’ll wonder where he’s been. Some interpreters suggest she intends to kill herself, but this is an unlikely way to say that. The song doesn’t go through to depict the final resolution, although it still feels like more than just the wishful thinking of a song like “The Box That It Came In.” The video leaves no ambiguity on this point.
Brooks has a very low profile online. Here is Pat Alger’s version of “The Thunder Rolls,” which contains the third verse. Alger co-wrote the song, which is the only song of this group that went to #1 on the country charts.
Brooks and Alger initially turned “The Thunder Rolls” over to Tanya Tucker to record. She initially decided not to release it, but her version is here. You can view Brooks’s controversial music video here.
“Papa Loved Mama”
This 1992 Garth Brooks #3 country hit is the first song in our list with a female songwriter. Kim Williams co-wrote “Papa Loved Mama” with Brooks. It is the most light-hearted of all the murder songs in this set. It’s a country-rocker, but doesn’t push the boundaries of the genre. The story is stereotypical, with a long-haul trucker returning home to surprise his wife, and finding her not home. A child also tells this story.
Here is Scotty McCreery’s cover of the Brooks original. You can also find covers by The Country Gentlemen and David Allan Coe, among others.
Listen to Dylan Miller’s cover of “Papa Loved Mama” on Spotify here.
“Kerosene” and “Sin for a Sin”
Our group of infidelity murder ballads wraps up with two from Miranda Lambert. They are the first where the songwriter, singer, and protagonist are all women. Both of these songs appeared after Goddu’s article, so capture a female voice she hadn’t yet heard. “Kerosene” (2004) ends ambiguously, leaving it unclear whether her unfaithful lover is literally or metaphorically dead to her. You may find an obvious path through this last stanza, but I can find at least a couple conflicting resolutions.
Now I don’t hate the one who left
You can’t hate someone who’s dead
He’s out there holdin’ onto someone, I’m holdin’ up my smokin’ gun
I’ll find somewhere to lay my blame the day she changes her last name
Well I’m givin’ up on love cause love’s given up on me
Well I’m givin’ up on love, HEY love’s given up on me
In the video, the scorned woman encounters the lovers on a bed in the middle of the road. When she sees them, she lights a trail of kerosene back to the house she shared with him, setting everything on fire. “Kerosene” reached #61 on the country charts. Lambert wrote the song herself, but realized an unconscious source in Steve Earle’s “I Feel Alright,” and credited him on the song as well.
“Sin for a Sin” (2009) is clearer about killing. Unsurprisingly, given the title, the song invokes religious elements that we only see in this list with Charley Pride’s recording. Lambert co-wrote the song with her then-husband, Blake Shelton, but didn’t release the song as a single.