John Prine's That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round

I've given myself the task of writing about one song a week for 2024 because, well, I think it'd be fun.

John Prine's That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round

Happy birthday, John.

I've been thinking about this recently. I had mentioned John Prine when I last discussed Kendrick Lamar, and so it's oddly fitting for me to mention Kendrick as I discuss John Prine. I have a very different reaction to "Not Like Us", his Drake diss track, than the internet did. Alleging someone is a pedophile is wild, and doing so through a diss track instead of a genuine petition for justice is just ... immoral. This is very different from the days of "Ether". Game is game, but this is real life. But looking beyond this point, which is not at all a trivial point, Kendrick's most recent album is an introspection of his sins and a doubling down on his humbleness towards God. Releasing "Not Like Us" is the very definition of hypocrisy, particularly when J. Cole had the decency to back off from the same beef.

I reflected on these actions as I reflect on the music made today. I said the 2010s was the decade for introspection. I will talk about this same subject a little more in-depth for my album of 2024, but the 2020s is shaping up to be the decade of rhetoric i.e. artists literally telling the audience what they are thinking and doing. On one side of the spectrum, these are acts by the artist to share their experiences with the audience and let them know they're not alone in their struggles. This is a vital message particularly after the pandemic. But on the other side of the spectrum, this is an arena rife for vanity. This is an arena for the artist to gain fake sympathy points from the audience. This is an arena where the artist gets fake points for saying what the audience wants them to say, regardless if it's relevant to the music or not.

In the context of the Drake beef, yes, Drake is an asshole, but why are we so bitter a people that we want to see him "destroyed"? That we want to see another person "destroy" an effigy? Again, there is game, there is Ric Flair level boasting, and then there's serious libel.

1978, the year John Prine's "Bruised Oranges", of which "That's The Way The World Goes 'Round" belongs, was a bitter year by any standard. This is the year of Jonestown. The US is also thick into the energy crisis. By the end of the year, the media will be set ablaze by the exploits of John Wayne Gacy. Yet, as Prine described it, he was "kind of fed up with a lot of cynicism that I saw in people, even in myself at the time." Because cynicism, after all, does not defeat cynicism, and cynicism does not suddenly throw a rope down the well from which the despairer climbs out of.

You don't have to hear, however, John Prine say it directly to understand how he felt as he wrote the songs. You need only to consult the lyrics yourself:

I know a guy who's got a lot to lose,
he's a pretty nice fellow, kinda confused,
got muscles in his head that ain't ever been used,
thinks he owns half of this town;

starts drinking heavy, gets a big red nose,
beats his old lady with a rubber hose,
then takes her out to dinner, buys her new clothes,
that's the way that the world goes 'round.

The first verse can be called "midwestern nice". I very much love it. In any other song, we might think the character described is an asshole. But Prine looks at it multiple ways, and because he does he begins with the nicest things he can say about his subject: "he's a pretty nice fellow, kinda confused", following with "got muscles in his head that ain't ever been used", meaning he's dumb. The "thinks he owns half of this town" is the real criticism, but, because Prine established the character beforehand, he has a big ego some of the time. Because human beings are complex, we're a lot of things at once, we're not always full of ourselves. From this verse alone we can see Prine is establishing a guy who doesn't have much self-awareness.

And we understand why this is a big issue in the second verse: "beats his old lady with a rubber hose". In our modern age, we recoil at spousal abuse. But this goes hand-in-hand with the next line: "takes her out to dinner, buys her new clothes". Again, there's a duality in people, love and hate are both on the same coin. It makes for a perplexing situation for sure, but Prine tries to look at the big picture, returning back to the first verse: "I know a guy who's got a lot to lose." This is really the most important part of this anecdote, that, say whatever you feel about the guy, but he's going to lose his partner from his drinking, and that's just sad. More than anything, that's real, we can see the sadness on the subject's face if he keeps treading down this path.

We find John forgiving. As he put it, "I wanted to find a way to get back to a better world, more childlike." Though we can't always extend empathy, we can try to extend understanding and tolerance.

Thus the chorus:

That's the way that the world goes 'round,
you're up one day, next you're down,
it's a half an inch of water, and you think you're gonna drown,
that's the way that the world goes 'round.

That's all there is to it. There are the things people do and the consequences they incur from it, but life continues anyway. We're merely human.

The next verses, some of my favorite:

I was sitting in the bathtub, counting my toes,
when the radiator broke, water all froze,
I got stuck in the ice without my clothes,
naked as the eyes of a clown.

I was crying ice cubes, hoping I'd croak
when the sun came through the window, the ice all broke,
I stood up and laughed, thought it was a joke,
that's the way that the world goes 'round.

Part of the reason why John himself is so forgiving is because he sees fear, doubt, and plain stupidity in his own brain. Well, one, why'd you stay in the bathtub after the radiator broke.

One can audibly hear John curse himself in that line, "naked as the eyes of a clown," a beautiful image. But in the next verse, with hindsight acquired, he ridicules himself: "I was crying ice cubes, hoping I'd croak." He really wished for his own death, after so small a fault. And just as he was deep in his feelings at the time, he didn't realize, after a long night, the sun must come up, winter does not stay forever, and we'll find we regret indulging in our miseries once we're on safer ground. That "stood up and laughed, thought it was a joke" is charming; we see Prine smiling to himself as he sings the lines, and our own hearts soften as we reflect on how unnecessary our hardness is.

I always return to Prine's quote: "Writing is about a blank piece of paper and leaving out what's not supposed to be there." I find Prine's songs arise to poetry. "That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round" is composed just of two anecdotes, day and night different from one another, having no connectivity and different protagonists, but you understand what Prine is trying to depict to you, regardless of what words he actually uses, that life is bearable and we can't allow ourselves to be warped by it when it's particularly unbearable. He does not need to use the words "you", "should", "will", nothing declarative, it's something understood from the story and the story alone, and that kind of understanding is more powerful than any rhetoric imaginable. That's also why I love art more than anything else: a great artist does not force a world unto you, they simply put appealing things in their world so as to entice you to look into it.

Whenever I get sad, I think about John Prine. He makes me remember that my sadness is aesthetic only and his viewpoint is probably the right one, that it's okay to be vulnerable, it's okay to be a sucker, and it's okay to feel burdened by the worries of the world. It's also okay to be an asshole sometimes, but it's better not to overdo it. It's okay to laugh it all off. In fact, that may make us wisest above all.