"So you won't be lonely": Grief at "Tha Crossroads" and "Last Stop: This Town"
The first piece on Chilltown Blues was about Color for Colors’ folk-rock album, “Heartache,” and its multifaceted approach to grief. That album got me thinking about other music on the subject. I’m sure there are thousands of new songs each year that explore it, and I’m also sure that there are unknown and under-known gems among them. But there’s a couple of older big label songs I found to be unique meditations on grief, and this essay will explore them — “Tha Crossroads” from Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and “Last Stop: This Town” by The Eels.
“Tha Crossroads” (1996) can literally be compared to an epic poem, an old style of longer poetry that chronicles some larger-than-life figure’s journey. This is partially down to the staccato delivery from Bone Thugs’ rappers, who are able to pack a lot of storytelling in the song’s nearly four-minute length.
As most songs allow, there’s room for interpretation about a lot on “Tha Crossroads” even while the song evokes grief for and name-checks specific figures. According to Wikipedia, it’s a remake of Bone Thug’s song "Crossroad" from their 1995 album, "E. 99 Eternal"; it's dedicated to Eazy-E, the group's mentor. The original “Crossroad” track, dedicated to friend, Wallace “Wally” Laird III, adds some context to the thematic wrestling with thug life in “Tha Crossroads.”
On “Crossroad,” Wish Bone raps, “And I gotta give hate to ya gangstas out there fakin' the funk, actin' like you got a problem, but you’re just too goddamned drunk.”
“Tha Crossroads” is in the very American, bluesy tradition of exploring its namesake. Crossroads are a physical intersection that represent a spiritual impasse. In early 20th Century American society where music that veered away from rigid, sometimes arbitrary notions of being a good Christian was considered sinful, crossroads loomed in multifaceted ways: A place where someone can sell their soul to gain a lot but also possibly get it back.
However, that comes after the crossroads loom, even with their biggest pop culture conjurer, blues musician Robert Johnson, initially as a place to contemplate death and possible judgment; and, as one of the refrains on “Tha Crossroads” goes, to pray.
“Tell me what you gonna do when it ain’t nowhere to run. When judgment comes from you,” the song begins, after some harmonizing with the word “Bone” repeated.
“God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” also known as “Run On,” is a traditional American folk song that’s been reworked into many versions. It has roots as a Black spiritual song, which is a key root to just about any modern American form of music.
Central to this folk classic is the idea that even for some immensely powerful figure, judgment was going to come. Songs like these were formed in a time when being Black meant your life could more completely be torn asunder and destroyed at the whim of a system that gave a pass to, and even encouraged, cruelty toward you from someone whose status was white.
The “Run On” part of the song — “Go tell that long-tongued liar ..." — speaks to this institutional backed-figure and also the local devil … the people among the marginalized who make a challenging life that much harder and also, with no real watchmen looking out for the marginalized, get to … “Run on, for a long time …”
Justice was, is, hard to get a grasp on. The idea that people who could arbitrarily destroy someone’s life would eventually face some sort of cosmic justice … that there was some form of cosmic justice …. that was a balm.
When Bone Thugs rap about there being nowhere to run in the opening of “Tha Crossroads,” they pick up this torch, and in my interpretation, this torch is also one that scares them — because being a thug is, at best, gray. In some lines the group doesn’t seem to think it invites the grace their song speaks to. The song’s narrators are grappling with people passing and wondering where they fit into the religious narrative of judgment that would allow them to see these figures they cherish, who they do feel are worthy of grace, again.
The song’s video features an angel of death collecting souls — going from taking one member’s uncle as they play cards on their porch to parents having to watch the angel take their newborn away in a hospital. As “Tha Crossroads” finds Bone Thugs willing to visit heaven or hell to visit the people they care about, eventually a refrain toward the end — “Living in a hateful world (sending me straight to heaven)” — offers a hopeful notion that maybe that’s the net result of a hateful world … because “hateful” means that it’s probably something you should detest, or at least detest a lot about it.
The song doesn’t hinge so much on faith; there’s a very palpable sense of people just trying to make sense of an unfair world shining through. They know how to do that mostly through the religious and spirituals lens they’ve inherited; they praise God, “even though the devil’s all up in my face”; and faith seems to offer safety or solace to a point. But they’re also figures grappling with how nonsensical the losses in their lives are: “Why’d they kill my dog?”
As a hymn about death, about deaths that seem particularly unfair, it builds to asking “Can anybody tell me why? Can anybody tell me why we die?”
You could say the crossroads are the intersection of life and death, and that lingering part of the chorus “See ya at the crossroads/so you won’t be lonely” is about telling you that you’re not alone in having to face death, or the crossroads, whatever it is that comes. Bone Thugs offer a shoulder for the listener to lean on to not just grieve but to contemplate mortality — both the fear of death and life in an imperfect, unfair world.
“Will you take me where you’re going if you’re never coming back?”
“Last Stop: This Town” is a single from the Eels’ 1998 album, “Electro-Shock Blues.” The album came in the wake of the loss of group front-person E's sister to suicide and as a response to his mother's terminal lung cancer, according to Wikipedia.
It finds the song’s narrator starting a walk/drive in a world where the sun is going down earlier than it should: “You're dead, but the world keeps spinning,” E sings as the circus-like melody plays in the background. “Take a spin through the world you left.”
That walk is the song’s through line. It feels physical and mental, taking place in a world that’s stark even with the circus music that’s cheerful (but also a bittersweet reminder of an elegy). “Last Stop: This Town” evokes a semi-suburban landscape that, proximity to billboards and factories and smoke aside, allows for a walk/ride that lets someone grieving get lost along the way, and get lost in that feeling.
The song’s chorus is basically “Get down,” and it rocks infectiously. That’s what makes this particular song epic — how pronounced its upbeat quality is, how much it illustrates someone being able to get some air and just wish that that was all they could do.
The line “I’m gong to fly on down, and fly away on my way” speaks to where the song’s narrator is able to find the space to “get down.” Flying in this space between places allows him to get down with the person whose last stop was possibly the town that the walk/ride takes place in.