The story of Joan Crawford takes many turns, but the end is visible in “Minor Joan Crawford Vehicle.”

Track: “Minor Joan Crawford Vehicle”
Album: Unreleased

We do not have the space here to go into the story of Joan Crawford, the real person, but we can touch on the parts of her life that inspired John Darnielle to write “Minor Joan Crawford Vehicle.” Crawford is one of the biggest stars in American film history, but she is debatably even more famous to modern audiences for the arc of her life. She went from an enormous star to a campy, tuned-up version of that same star in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to a late-period B-movie actress. That arc happens to people, but rarely as famously and as completely as happened to Crawford, and rarely from such heights. Darnielle introduced the only known performance of the song during a cruise concert by saying he’s fascinated by divorce and people who stay public after their “sell-by date” and you probably already knew that, if you knew his material.

There are a variety of comparisons to make. You could see this as an extension of some of the scenes from Tallahassee, though obviously those characters got to those pre-divorce moments in a less public way. You could see this as what it literally is described to be, another version of so many songs about actual people who find themselves in cigarette-stained dens wondering what went wrong. It’s really both, I think, and while it’s similar to much of Darnielle’s output, it’s another reminder that it can happen to anyone.