Bobby Goldsboro — 456

ALBUM: Bobby Goldsboro Greatest Hits (1970)

The tears wrenched out of human beings by Bobby Goldsboro can be measured in gallons.

Hundreds, thousands of gallons.

‘Honey’ was a huge worldwide hit in 1968 for Goldsboro, born in Florida but who grew up in Dothan and attended Auburn University. Bobby Russell, who wrote  ‘The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,’  was ‘Honey’s’ writer.

It was a sentimental tissue-thin manipulation of a song. It was the best of songwriting, and the worst of songwriting.

I’d admire the suspense and mystery built up around the singer’s descriptions of his wife/lover. The La-Tee-Da casual storytelling style draws you in as it drops foreboding hints all the way.

My critique is that the words are often silly, and combined with the syrupy strings, comes off as maudlin. And the casual storytelling style, once you get the whole picture, is kind of  creepy.

That said, the songwriter used some deft devices to make this sad. For example never really telling us what happened requiring our brains to think harder to speculate what happened a la ‘Ode to Billie Joe.’

My mother, a longtime educator, gave me this album recently, but we used to cry in the car over it decades ago. It was a No. 1 hit in the U.S. and charted all over the world.

So again the overarching question here is what happened? She died, but what other clues are there.

Let’s react to the lyrics and find out.

Song lyrics italics, my comments bold.

Honey by Bobby Russell, performed by Bobby Goldsboro