John Darnielle rewrites a traditional love song in the style of the Mountain Goats with “Stars Fell on Alabama.”

Track: “Stars Fell on Alabama”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

The original “Stars Fell on Alabama” is very sweet, and I highly suggest the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong version before trying to approach this one. The terminology will get stretched here if we call the song by the Mountain Goats a “cover” because it appears to share little beyond a title. It’s that fact that says everything, since you have to consider why John Darnielle borrowed the title of such a sweet song to write a song that ends with someone pulling a gun on someone they love.

Darnielle says he wrote the anti-love anthem “No Children” when he heard the Lee Ann Womack song “I Hope You Dance” on the radio. I won’t link it here, but it’s so super-saturated that it’s difficult to listen to even once. What does “promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance” in a love song even mean, really? Darnielle’s catalog is designed for someone who hears that and doesn’t hear their world. “No Children” isn’t a love song for a new generation or anything, but it’s meant to sound familiar. You know “I hope you die // I hope we both die,” whether you want to or not.

The comparison here isn’t as stark, because the sweetness of the original “Stars Fell on Alabama” is far more genuine than “I Hope You Dance.” While this one isn’t an attempt to “fix” a message, it’s still a rewriting of a love song. In both songs two lovers spend time alone together, but in the Goats version it’s not “I never planned in my imagination a situation so heavenly // a fairy land where no one else could enter” it’s “and your pistol glistened.”