The Saddest Songs Are the Ones About Flowers

My buddy Nick swears that “Chiseled in Stone” by Vern Gosdin is the saddest country song ever written. “You ran crying to the bedroom,” it begins:

I ran off to the bar
Another piece of Heaven gone to Hell
The words we spoke in anger just tore my world apart
And I sat there feeling sorry for myself

It’s a hell of start. Seldom has romantic strife been evoked so concisely. What words did they speak in anger? None, we suspect, that lovers haven’t always said. The point, I think, is that these lovers never dreamed they’d be the ones saying them. Nobody sets out to be miserable in love.

After a modest run as a singer and guitar player in California folk-country bands, Gosdin retired in the early seventies only to rally as a solo act later in the decade. Beginning in his mid-forties, he sent one song after another—“I’m Still Crazy,” “Is It Raining at Your House?,” “This Ain’t My First Rodeo”—into the top 10. “Chiseled in Stone,” which won the’89 CMA award for best song, helped