Jackson C. Frank - "Just Like Anything"

If one can understand Jackson C. Frank at all, then one can understand him in two ways when he explains that he "speaks in answers only/to see them in my mind." Either a) he exclusively speaks in answers (and does so to see them in his mind), or b) when he speaks in answers, he does so for one purpose only: to see them in his mind. If the former, then he's like the television show Jeopardy in that his answers aren't solutions but questions, though Frank's (e.g. "Death has no season/so I know I'll never die"), unlike Trebek's (e.g. "The largest North American rodent"), are metaphysically puzzling and unGooglable. If the latter (or, for that matter, if the former -- and therefore, yes, necessarily), Frank is obviously in jeopardy of losing his grip on coherence and meaning and maybe even sanity -- the last being something that, when the singer was still a young man, would forever escape him. This fact casts an added bleakness on what is already an unrelentingly bleak folk song. The song's premise -- that, "just like anything, to sing is a state of mind" -- reminds us how sad was the fate of Frank's gifted mind, prematurely lost along with all its states. [Buy]

Shirley Collins - "Died for Love"

Jeopardy has a legal sense, too. It is the danger, posed to defendants in a criminal trial, of being found guilty and of consequent punishment. In most constitutional democracies, a defendant is prevented from facing jeopardy twice for the same crime. But as in law, not so in love. Just ask Shirley Collins, who has been losing trials of the heart related to the same misguided tryst since the beginning of time. Despite the song's title, Collins has not died for love. She wishes. [Buy]