Today Tomorrow & Forever, I will Always Have a Broken Heart?

• I Fall To Pieces by Patsy Cline More Patsy Cline music on iLike

Patsy Cine is one of country music’s female legends. Some of her songs are some of my all time favorites. Who doesn’t love a classic like “Crazy” or “I fall to pieces”?

But can anyone really listen to a whole Patsy Cline album? I attempted it once, and for the first time I realized just how depressing all of her songs are. 90% of them are about a man she lost and her broken heart.

Let’s just take a look at the some of the song titles from the Patsy Cline AlbumToday, Tomorrow, & Forever (yes, I do mean actual album) in my collection:

• Walkin’ After Midnight (ok so you need the lyrics to feel the mood of this one, but depressing)
• Love me, Love Me, Honey Do
• A Church, A Courtroom, Then Goodbye
• Don’t Ever Leave Me Again
• I’m Blue Again
• Just Out of Reach

This excludes her other hits:

• Crazy
• I Fall to Pieces
• Why Can’t He Be You
• She’s Got You
• You’re Stronger than Me
• Leavin’ On Your Mind

I am a hopeless romantic and I’ve had my heart broken by a few men and I’m sure it will be broken again in the future. I enjoy sappy songs when I am feeling low…but really Patsy Cline is just too much. I can’t even handle it. I guess this is where the “too much of a good thing” saying comes in.

Maybe part of what gets me is that Patsy Cline was famous in the era leading up to the second wave of the feminist movement. Women were gaining more and more rights. Yet the message that she was constantly sending was that a woman needs a man to be happy; she could have been a strong independent woman and had songs to that effect.

It is important to note Patsy Cline wasn’t the only artist in her day that had a plethora of depressing songs, it was the nature of the genre at the time. I am happy to say that country music has evolved from this misconstrued stereotype that all country songs are sad songs.

Sad times are often the most inspiring; the passionate because they are the most emotional. It is easy to write and sell a powerful song about heartbreak if you have been there and can truly relate to the lyrics.

This by no means dismisses what Patsy Cline accomplished in her career as a country music artist. She did phenomenal things for the country music genre, she is a legend, and her accomplishments should be respected. To this day, Patsy Cline is one of my all-time favorite country music artists. So take a minute to follow the link above and enjoy one of my favorite Patsy Cline songs, “I Fall to Pieces.”