Great Song: Billy Bragg – Levi Stubbs’ Tears

Welcome to the first edition of “Great Songs”, a new feature in which we will analyze what we consider to be, you guessed it, “great songs”, and share with you what we feel makes them special. It is not a coincidence that I chose “Levi Stubbs’ Tears” as the first song to represent this feature. Not only is it my favorite Billy Bragg song, it is also a song that aligns really well with the goal of this project. The Thanks List is a project that was started out of love and a deep passion for music. As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, we talk to some of our favorite musicians and offer them a platform to express that same love about some of their favorite musicians.  Levi Stubbs’ Tears is a little bit of that, in that it is, in a way, a love letter to the music of the Four Tops and other soul singers and songwriters of the Motown era. But it is also more than that. It is a song about the power of music and how it can help you get through the most difficult times.

The way Bragg writes is that he paints massive images that are filled with emotions with very few words. The song opens with these lines:

With the money from her accident she bought herself a mobile home
So at least she could get some enjoyment out of being alone
No one could say that she was left up on the shelf
It’s “you and me against the world, kid” she mumbled to herself

The first verse paints a situation of loneliness. Without explaining any of the details (some of it comes later) the images are already very clear. In the very first line we already have an introduction to the story: we see a woman who went through some kind of accident, got some compensation, and lives alone in a mobile home. What type of accident? Why a mobile home?  What is remarkable about Bragg’s writing style is how descriptive his words are without being explanatory. We see a lot in these four lines.  Bragg paints a picture, but refuses to give us all the answers, and leaves our imagination to fill up the rest.

The first verse is then followed by the first “chorus” (if we can call it a “chorus”… it is quite an unconventional one, as it is only two lines, has no repetition, and ends almost as soon as it starts, but it does come, with variations, after every verse):

When the world falls apart some things stay in place
Levi Stubbs’ tears run down his face

When it feels like everything is falling apart in your life, there are still some things you can count on and, in this case, music is filling that role. No matter how bad it gets, music is always there to make you feel something, and your love for it can never be affected. This lonely, post-accident woman feels alone against the whole world. But when she hears Levi Stubb’s wonderful voice, she knows he feels pain too: he has “tears running down his face”. And she doesn’t feel so alone anymore. She’s lonely and in pain, but she recognizes that same pain in another human, in an artist she admires, and she knows that somewhere, someone understands, and that music will always be there for her and that fact alone helps her get by through the most difficult of times. The following verses are increasingly more tragic, yet, every time, no matter how incredibly hard the life of the protagonist can get, they are followed by the same statement: “When the world falls apart some things stay in place”. And every time, the thing that stays in place is Levi Stubb’s music and how she can relate to his feelings (again, his tears running down his face). 

Before exploring the second and third verses, let’s talk about the music itself. What really differentiates song lyrics from other forms of literature is that they are truly linked to the performer’s vocal interpretation. You can read a lyrics sheet and have a feel of the meaning of the song, but it is always different when you hear the singer sing these words. It gives the words a specific color and can sometimes even alter their meaning altogether.

The song opens with a series of three resonating chords that are calmly picked with a kind of hesitation in the rhythm, followed by an abrupt single palm muted strum(0:08) and a two second powerfully strummed buildup. Right there, in the first ten seconds, we get a preview of the emotional rollercoaster that the song is going to make us go through. The uncertainty of the first chords, the abrupt break that warns us of an upcoming direct and brutal change in emotion, followed by the short and aggressive strum… it is like a 10 seconds mini version of the song. It announces everything. And then, at the 10th second, Billy Bragg starts to sing, and his guitar goes back to playing very calmly.

Throughout the first verse, his voice is calm and distinctively sad. It is only him and his electric guitar. No drums, no bass. The tradition for guitar based singer-songwriters who perform as a solo act is usually to play with an acoustic. Electric guitars, historically, have been more present in rock based music and often accompanied at least by drums and/or bass. The fact the he performs alone, with his widely resonating electric guitar, only adds to the feeling of loneliness of the song, to the coldness of the atmosphere. You hear that even though he can play loud, he has to make an effort not to. And when he does, and that’s all you hear, it feels like a loud noise in the middle of nowhere that no one would hear. Right as the first verse ends, the guitar goes from a soft, muted picking to an energetic strum of powerful resonating chords, and it is then that Bragg declares, singing for the first time with a loud, energetic voice: “When the world falls apart some things stay in place”. But just as the line ends, both his voice and his guitar immediately return to their former, calmer selves to sing that “Levi Stubb’s Tears run down his face”.

The second verse continues the progression of the story, giving us a bit of insight on the protagonist’s situation:

She ran away from home in her mother’s best coat
She was married before she was even entitled to vote
And her husband was one of those blokes
The sort that only laughs at his own jokes
The sort a war takes away
And when there wasn’t a war he left anyway

Again, everything is written beautifully, and makes the tragic elements feel that much heavier. She wasn’t “married too young”, she was “married before she was even entitled to vote”. He gives us just enough information, but values color over facts and this is what helps make it such an image heavy song. He doesn’t describe the protagonist’s personality. He tells us that she ran away from home “in her mother’s best coat”. It is impossible not to imagine her upon hearing these words, and it leaves us imagining the type of person that she is, the type of life that she had, to run away from home and do it in her mother’s best coat. It feels like hearing a conversation that has already been started, catching a movie halfway through, but still having an idea of what’s going on and hearing just enough to really stimulate your imagination about all the details that are not mentioned outright. We understand, though, that her loneliness comes from a bad marriage, from a difficult youth, from young love turned sour. But again, the chorus comes back to tell us that music is still there for her, and after that second chorus comes the most upbeat, joyful part of the song:

Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong
Are here to make everything right that’s wrong
Holland and Holland and Lamont Dozier too
Are here to make it all okay with you

Here, he mentions a number of Motown songwriters and lets us know that they will make everything ok and that they will right everything that’s wrong. The vibe changes drastically for this short (more or less 12-15 seconds) part. There are some light percussions and Billy Bragg sings hopeful lyrics in a more joyful manner. But then, at 1:55, the guitar and percussions stop and we transition directly into the third and last verse, by far the darkest of the three. The fact that this joyful part comes just before it only accentuates the darkness of the verse and, by contrast, takes us by surprise, at a moment when we are not ready, when we think everything is gonna be ok. It is at this moment that he sings the most beautifully written yet horrifying line of the song:

One dark night he camehome from the sea
And put a hole in her body where no hole should be
It hurt her more to see him walking out the door
And though they stitched her back together they left her heart in pieces on the floor

He “put a hole in her body where no hole should be”…

The story ends here, with the protagonist being at the wrong end of an act of domestic violence. And through it all, tragically, what affected her the most was being left alone (“It hurt her more to see him walking out the door”), as she has suffered through a life of loneliness. By seeing her husband shoot her and leave, it has scarred her emotionally for life (“left her heart in pieces on the floor”).

Let’s take a moment to go back to the bridge here. He mentions Norman Whitfield, Barrett Strong, and Holland, Dozier & Holland. But he doesn’t refer to them by their usual “Holland, Dozier & Holland“designation. He says “Holland and Holland“, which is a well known gun manufacturer based in the UK, and then he mentions “and Lamont Dozier too“. That is in the part immediately preceding the verse where he describes an act of domestic violence with a gun, in a song about the power of Soul Music. Truly genius wordplay.

Still, no matter how dark that third verse is, no matter how bad things get for our protagonist, Billy Bragg still ends the song by telling us that “some things stay in place”. That is still the main thing he wants to express in this song and this belief is only strengthened by the fact that he holds on to it through such a dark song.

When the world falls apart some things stay in place
She takes off the Four Tops tape and puts it back in its case
When the world falls apart some things stay in place
Levi Stubbs’ tears

It is a deeply sad song, with a heart wrenching conclusion. But even through all the hardship, the despair, the loneliness, the heartbreak… the ruthless violence…there is still a touch of hope in the song, and if there is anything we should take from it, it is that music and art can be powerful and can truly save people, even in the most desperate of situations.

post-scriptum:

I would like, in conclusion, to share my appreciation for the music video of this song. There are not that many music videos that I really like. Many of them have that glossy “advertisement-like” feel to them and as for others, well, I’ve seen enough bands play in an empty warehouse or on a rooftop. I truly love this music video, though. It’s just Billy Bragg playing alone, in a dark room with a black background and, towards the end, the camera follows the horn player for the “sad trumpet” finale. It was recorded live in a single take, it is minimal, it is expressive and it is all that it needed to be to accompany this song. The perfect music video and one of my favorite of all time.

Enjoy!