Music Review: Train "50 Ways To Say Goodbye"

Train

50 Ways to Say Goodbye

Album: California 37

Year: 2012

     Pat Monahan can’t deal with being dumped in the offensive  “50 Ways To Say Goodbye”

       A mawkish mariachi horn opens the single, setting a campy tone. He can’t move a limb. He thought she would stick around. He thinks of himself as a good-looking guy, smart guy and she was lucky to have him in her life. He promises not to badmouth her to anyone. She told him she needs to be single and he would be better off without him. (“My heart is paralyzed/My head was oversized/I'll take the high road like I should/You said it's meant to be/That it's not you, it's me/You're leaving now for my own good.”)

       In the pre-chorus, he pretends to shrug it off. (“That's cool, but if my friends ask where you are I'm gonna say.”)

        In the chorus, he opts to say she died instead of admitting they broke up at all. To each of his friends, he makes up a different death for her. In some versions, it’s tragic (an airplane, a shark,) but mostly it’s  ridiculous, aimed at humilating her  (cement mixer, suntan booth.).People are asking him for more information and he can’t think of anything. The truth just can’t be told.  (“She went down in an airplane/Fried getting suntanned/Fell in a cement mixer full of quicksand/Help me, help me, I'm no good at goodbyes!/She met a shark under water/Fell and no one caught her/I returned everything I ever bought her/Help me, help me, I'm all out of lies/And ways to say you died.”)

       The random mariachi horns gets a solo.

        He really cared about her. He hopes to find someone right for him who will think he’s capable of anything and not an inantimate object without feelings. Worst of all (in his mind), he can’t believe she left on Yom Kippur, a holy day. (“My pride still feels the sting/You were my everything/Some day I'll find a love like yours (a love like yours)/She'll think I'm Superman/Not super minivan/How could you leave on Yom Kippur?”)

   The pre-chorus is sung again.

  In the second chorus, there are more deaths. He aims to make her look trashy (dancing to death at a club, drowned in a hot tub), idiotic (eaten by a lion) and inattentive (mudslide, getting run over by a car). (“She was caught in a mudslide/Eaten by a lion/Got run over by a crappy purple Scion/Help me, help me, I'm no good at goodbyes!/She dried up in the desert/Drowned in a hot tub/Danced to death at an east side night club/Help me, help me, I'm all out of lies/And ways to say you died.”)

    The random mariachi horns return for another solo.

        In the bridge, he says he misses her and wants to be with her. However, she changed her mind. (“I wanna live a thousand lives with you/I wanna be the one you're dying to love/But you don't want to.”)

     The pre-chorus is sung twice.

     The first and second chorus are sung again to end the single.

   Monahan’s strained, hyperbolized vocals twist the rejection into a knot of one joke after the other. He can’t bear to say a woman left him. His masculinity has been harmed. He will shame her the only way he knows how. He’ll say she passed away. Then, he becomes the victim and people will feel sorry for him.

 The ridiculous, nonsensical one-liners in songs are eye-rolling, at worst. To turn a breakup song into a joke about a girlfriend dying is sick and morbid. It crosses the line from an obnoxious guy making up a stupid song as how to why his team rocks at the bar to mentally unhinged guy stalking his favorite team, hiding underneath the team bus, sprinting out before game time demanding an autograph and a win or else.

The low “50 Ways To Say Goodbye” climbs down the final rung of decency, kicking and cursing the entire way.   

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