My Top 1000 Songs #429: Two Daughters & A Beautiful Wife

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

For obvious reasons, most the entries on this list are songs I'd be happy to listen to every single day if time permitted. But then there are the ones so emotionally gut-punching that I only pull them out on rare occasions; they're just too much to bear, and I never want them to lose that almost physical impact.

So, this is one of those latter songs. Off the Drive-By Truckers' 2008 LP Brighter Than Creation's Dark, "Two Daughters And A Beautiful Wife" is based on a true story. In 2006, a friend of Truckers singer Patterson Hood (Bryan Harvey of indie band House of Freaks) was slaughtered in his home, along with his entire family, by a serial killer. 

Over a gentle, backwoods Americana ballad, Hood imagines the morning after, Harvey approaching the pearly gates.

"Is there vengeance up in heaven?

Or are those things left behind?

Maybe every day is Saturday morning.

Two daughters and a wife.

Two daughters and a beautiful wife."

Only a small number of songs leave me a sobbing mess. Even fewer have me teary-eyed just thinking about them.

Fuck.

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