What I've Learned

Much of the dreck that passes for songwriting these days can't hold a candle to Go Tell Aunt Rhody.

First of all, Rhody gives enough information about the story it's telling, but not too much. Also, its words are well-married to its tune, and the tune is well-formed and singable.

It starts with action. Someone is being sent to deliver a message, to tell Aunt Rhody that the old gray goose is dead.

The name Aunt Rhody and the mention of a goose suggest a country setting, perhaps a farm.

There is an instant mystery. How will Aunt Rhody react to the news? That question is heightened in the second verse when the identity of the goose is clarified. It's the one Rhody was saving to make a feather bed.

See how the verses further the story? Modern songwriting tends to give you the whole story at once, then repeat it over and over for three minutes, trying to drive it into your head and your hand into your wallet.

We don't know if Aunt Rhody will be pleased or displeased, happy or sad about the news. Why save a goose to make a feather bed? Couldn't the goose and the feathers have been harvested at any time? Perhaps Rhody only said she was saving the goose because she had a fondness for the bird and didn't want it to become the main course at Christmas.

The last three verses tell us more about the goose.

One gives us details about her death. Often, this is sung as the third verse, but sometimes it is postponed until the end. "She died in the mill pond, from standing on her head."

This comic description suggests an unstable mental state, perhaps due to advanced age. Standing on one's head in a pond is not the action, even among geese, of a clear-thinking individual. Drowning in the process speaks of derangement, perhaps even of suicidal tendencies.

It could be that the goose knew Aunt Rhody could no longer protect her, or that, at last, the time for feather bed-making had arrived. Either way, the thought of the chopping block and the hatchet could have been too much for the goose, and she decided to leave this world on her own terms.

Most songs don't give enough information to lead to this kind – or any kind – of speculation. It's all baby, I love you; baby, I love you; baby, I love you, with no setting and no inkling of who the singer or the beloved baby is.

The other two verses tell of the goose's relationships and the sadness at her passing. "The gander is weeping because his wife is dead," is followed by, "The goslings are crying because their mother's dead."

The goose had goslings, so perhaps she wasn't so old after all. Hm.

The words are married well to the tune. The long notes have singable vowels. Goooo tell Aunt Rhoooody. The ooooone she was saaaaaving. She diiiiiiied in the miiiiill pond. Gaaaaaander is weeeeping. See what I mean?

The tune, itself, first appeared in 1752 as a melody in an opera by Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Some claim that Go Tell Aunt Rhody has layers of meaning and is filled with political undertones and social commentary. Forget all that. Even straight up, it has more of the qualities that make good songs good than do most popular hits of the past 30 years.