100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #6: Harry Chapin, Taxi

This is Harry Chapin’s glorious story of the ultimate futility of life.  Harry is a taxi driver; Sue is his high-school crush who got away.  They lost touch for years until one evening, when she gets into his cab, and throughout the song, we hear about their dreams which crashed and burned.  She was going to be an actress; he was going to learn to fly.  In this song, there is anger, frustration, regret, sadness and, finally, fatalism which can make a grown man cry.  *Sniff*

As with so many of the storytellers on this list who have left us, we can but wonder what they would’ve had to say about the depthless hubris of, and the appalling mistakes made by, Western leaders this century.  Harry Chapin worked himself to death in 1981 at the atrociously young age of 38.  Thanks for what you left behind, Mr Chapin.  There are lots of us still “keeping the change”.

Onslaught is out now at the special introductory price of $2.99 in the US here, in the UK here, in Canada here, and in Australia here.